00:00:00WILSON: Tape one side one of Peace Corps Oral History Project interview
with Robin Sither, December 2, 2004, interviewed by Jack Wilson. Born,
Robin?
SITHER: I was born in a little town outside of the Fort Ruffner, Alabama
called Daleville and that was just kind of happenstance. I mean I
could have been born anywhere else in the south at any military base
because my dad at that point was moving around quite a bit. So that
was just kind of --
WILSON: Okay, well that's sort of what I was going to ask you next.
Tell me something about your family and your general growing up.
SITHER: Well as I alluded to, I was a military brat growing up. My
father was in the army and at that point he was an aviator. He flew
00:01:00a fixed wing and helicopters. And of course I was born in Alabama
and moved around in the south quite a bit, but at that point I don't
remember anything because I was too young. But my first memories were
when we were stationed in Germany. My dad was stationed at Frankfurt
am Main and we lived in this giant apartment complex and those are my
first memories are of living in that city and, you know, looking out
over the skyline and seeing, at that point it was the seventies so you
could still see bombed out buildings from the war. And it was kind of
a dreary landscape, you know, with being --
WILSON: So you would have been in elementary school at that point?
SITHER: No, at that point I was in kindergarten.
WILSON: Oh, okay.
SITHER: Preschool age, whatever. I was around five years old so. And
00:02:00we were in Germany for about three years and then we moved back to the
States and we moved to Marina, California which is outside of Fort Ord
which is near Monterey. So it was quite a change from Germany; it was
a really beautiful area, it's on the coast obviously. I mean I just,
we lived just a rock's throw from Highway One. So I could just go, if
I wanted to, I could just go under the underpass and go to the beach or
something like that.
WILSON: And did you go to high school out there?
SITHER: No, we were out there -- my father got cut during the Carter
administration. They were cutting back the military at that point so
he -- they cut him out and he went into the private sector and held down
a few different jobs, and actually I just learned recently the reason
00:03:00we moved to Kentucky, which is where most of my family is, is that
my father was promised a job by a good friend of his that he trusted
really quite a bit. And we actually -- he actually sold the house and
we were ready to move to another town in California to accept the job,
and it turns out the job wasn't forthcoming. So moving to Kentucky was
kind of like a -- you know, it was kind of a safety stop. His parents,
my grandparents, lived here so we just moved temporarily to Lexington.
Well, it wasn't temporary. We've been here ever since but --
WILSON: So your father had roots in Kentucky?
SITHER: Yeah, my father and his siblings -- my grandparents on his
side are Lexingtonians, but he, like myself, was a military brat. My
00:04:00grandfather was in the Army Air Corps during World War Two. He was a
medium bomber pilot. My father was born during the war while he was
away at service and he was the first born. He was born in 1943. When
my grandfather returned from the war, like many other veterans he used
the G.I. Bill to, I believe, get a law degree, and with that I believe
he went into the O.S.I., which I think is the intelligence wing, --
WILSON: Right.
SITHER: -- of one of those. It's now defunct I believe, but -- and so
they moved around quite a bit but they ended up in Washington D.C.,
and he along with his siblings grew up in D.C. in Maryland, in the
Chevy Chase area. And my grandfather actually had a pretty illustrious
00:05:00career. He -- in addition to the O.S.I. he eventually went into the
F.B.I., and during the Warren Commission they decided -- one of the
things that came out of the Warren Commission was to beef up security
for the White House, and he was actually the first appointee to kind
of head that whole thing. In fact, apparently they even asked him if
it should be a political appointment and he said, "Absolutely not. It
should be a merit based type of thing." But -- and then after that he
went into the private sector; he worked for Occidental Petroleum and
worked -- I guess designed security for them and their overseas offices
and stuff like that, so --
WILSON: Okay, so you have some roots.
SITHER: Yeah, a lot of strong Kentucky roots because their families were
still here and I've got a lot of cousins and uncles and aunts all over.
00:06:00A lot of them are scattered to the four winds, but the epicenter, if
you will, is pretty much Kentucky and Lexington.
WILSON: Okay, what about college?
SITHER: I went to school in North Carolina. In Ashville, North Carolina
there's a school called the University of North Carolina--Ashville
which is in the North Carolina state college system. It's a small
school, about 3300 students; it is one of the few liberal arts
schools in the North Carolina system. And it was a great setting
for a school. I mean Ashville is up in the mountains. It's very --
fairly cosmopolitan for its locale and it's just a really interesting
place to be and a great place to go to school. And I was originally
attracted to the area because my father's brother, my Uncle Tom, for
00:07:00his honeymoon he and his wife -- I think it was, I believe, 1979 or
1980, they hiked the Appalachian Trail from north to south, Maine to
Georgia, 2000 miles. And the place that really made an impression on
them was western North Carolina. And of course, you know this is back
in the '70s when you had that whole get back to nature movement and all
that stuff. So they decided -- and he was in medical school at that
point; he decided once he completed his residency and got his feet wet,
that they would buy a piece of land down there and he would work as a
doctor, you know, in the nearby community and homestead, if you will,
I guess with a regular job. So they bought a plot of land in Madison
County, North Carolina, which is one of the pretty remote and pretty --
not very densely populated. So they bought a beautiful piece of land
00:08:00that abutted this mountain and the national forest and all that and
they did their thing there. And they actually built their houses from
using -- I mean they used contractors, but it was my aunt and my uncle
basically built these houses. First the guest house so they could stay
in the guest house while they built the main house. And when I started
going down there in the summers and helping them, and that's how I fell
in love with the area, and so that's pretty much how I decided to go to
that area for school.
WILSON: Okay. And what years were you there?
SITHER: I graduated in 1994, so 1990 to 1994.
WILSON: 1990 to `94, and that's your father's side of the family?
SITHER: That's my father's side of the family. My mother is from Korea,
--
WILSON: Oh, okay.
SITHER: -- near Pusan. Now, her side of the family is an interesting
story, too. Her mother, my grandmother, and her husband, my
00:09:00grandfather who I never met because he died and he stayed in Korea, and
I've never been to Korea but that's another story. But they were in
Japan during World War II and my grandfather was a shipyard worker in
the docks, I guess. I think it was Osaka. And my mother, I guess --
my grandmother was a homemaker or something like that; maybe she helped
on some other things, but at that point, you know, because Korea was
a colony of Japan at that point, it was not uncommon to have Korean
communities in Japan. And, of course, it's history now, but they were
subjected to quite a bit of prejudice.
WILSON: Right.
SITHER: Because at that point in Japan's history they were quite an
exclusive society, still are to some respects but not as badly. But
00:10:00it was pretty rough going for them, and of course to boot it was a
war time and they were getting bombed by the United States military,
you know, and a directed civilian -- I mean they made no bones about
it; they were targeting civilians. So they got caught up in that
and in fact, and this is pretty family lore is that I don't know if
it was Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but one of the two, they were actually
fleeing Osaka or wherever they were near Osaka and they were going
to one of those--one of the two places and you know the whole time
along road they were getting strafed by, you know, aircraft and you
know-- Apparently my mom and my grandmother saw somebody, you know some
shrapnel take the head off some guy and the head was rolling around in
the street and it was pretty gruesome. And they were having to duck
into bomb shelters and what not. And they were just a day away from
reaching either Hiroshima or Nagasaki before they dropped the--
00:11:00
WILSON: A-bomb.
SITHER: Yeah, or one of the two. So it was kind precarious. But
then after the war they moved back to Korea, and then of course what
happens, what five years later, is that the Korean War breaks out and
they were-- If you're familiar with that conflict, in the initial stage
of that conflict the North Koreans pushed--
WILSON: The U.S.
SITHER: Well, a few of the U.S. but it was mainly South Koreans and a
bit of the U.S. but all the way down to a perimeter what they called
a Pusan perimeter and they were one of the last villages inside the
perimeter. So they kind of got lucky in that respect. So you know
they endured one war and return home and then endure another war.
And my mom met my dad, my dad after he was-- He served in Vietnam as
an infantry platoon leader. After that I guess he decided he didn't
want to be on the ground getting shot at so he'd rather be in the air
getting shot at, so he went to flight school and learned how to fly
00:12:00helicopters and fixed wing, and then his first assignment-- Well I
don't know if it was his first assignment, but he went to South Korea
in 1969 and he met my mother and they married I believe 1971, moved to
the States, and I was born in 1972 so.
WILSON: So you graduated in '94?
SITHER: I graduated in '94, yes.
WILSON: And then what?
SITHER: I had no inklings of Peace Corps at that point. The first thing
I did is I had a seasonal job. I was working for the state of North
Carolina; they had a horticultural research station and I was-- It was
a seasonal job that I had held the previous summer.
WILSON: And what did you-- Let me back up.
SITHER: I majored in environmental science.
WILSON: In environmental science.
SITHER: Yeah with an ecology focus; they had different tracks you
could take, hazardous waste management and what not. I chose the
00:13:00ecology track, so what I basically-- Right after I graduated I stuck
around Ashville and I worked at this horticultural station; it was a
pretty interesting job. It basically amounted to driving around apple
orchards counting various types of bugs in the wake of different types
of pest management experiments. They were based on using pheromones
to disrupt the mating pattern of these moths that attack apples. West
North Carolina, the Hendersonville area is a very apple growing region
so that was our focus. But that was seasonal and it kind of fizzled
out. After that, you know that was the still a recession at that point
and Ashville--there's not much going on there and I wanted to stay
there but there weren't many jobs. I took a job telemarketing and at
that point I had already made up my mind that what I was going to do,
like my Uncle Tom, was hike the Appalachian Trail. So I made plans to
00:14:00do that the following spring and I held down this job and just worked
it and just stayed with it until I was ready to hit the trail because
I needed some funds at that point so. And of course telemarketing,
that was interesting. I did everything from selling-- Of course the
big one was credit cards and credit card insurance, which is a scam
by the way. Don't ever get credit card insurance. But everything
from that to scholarship programs and legal programs and all kinds
of funky stuff, it wasn't that much fun. It's not an easy job to do,
being a telemarketer and I can definitely identify with those people
call me and I try to be nice to them because I know. I paid my dues
and I know what it feels like. I even did, and I'm ashamed to admit
this, but I actually did what's called push polling. Which is that
00:15:00you know around election time when you just pick up your phone and
you know the phone rings you just pick up the phone and somebody you
know smears a candidate with some, you know gratuitous information and
then, you know, "Would you vote for this guy?" or whatever you know.
Or, "Just thought I'd let you know that," click. It's kind of-- Of
course I only did that for about an afternoon before I said, "You can't
make me do this. I'll quit." Said, "Alright, alright. We'll take you
off this campaign and put you on another." So after that, 1995 I-- my
thing at that point, I wasn't that ambitious at that point. My whole
thing was to hike the Appalachian Trail, which if you're not familiar
with it runs from the state of Maine to Georgia and it runs along the
Appalachian Mountains which is contiguous mountain range that runs
all the way up there, even into Canada and beyond. But it's just
00:16:002000 miles, so I started on the summer solstice June 21, 1995 and I
completed in December 15 of the same year.
WILSON: And you started in Maine?
SITHER: Yeah, started in Maine. Most people start in the south in
Georgia; that's the most common because you're hiking with the season
so it's a lot easier that way, logistically too. But I went the
opposite way, which is the way of the more intrepid people, or at least
that's what I like to think. Boy, it's definitely the least common
way. It's not as easy because you have to start later in the season,
May or June versus February or March in the south because you've got to
avoid the weather--
WILSON: Snows.
SITHER: Yeah. And then you also run into bugs, which in Maine are
pretty darn-- I mean it's one thing to have a few mosquitoes bite you
but we're talking swarms of black flies and mosquitoes that will not
relent. I mean you literally have to be covered with bug goo or you
will just get eaten alive. And I experienced that but fortunately I
00:17:00was hiking even later than you're supposed to so I kind of missed the
brunt of that.
WILSON: Did you do that by yourself?
SITHER: I started out by myself. I actually had an opportunity, I had
a guy I graduated with--or I didn't graduate with him but I knew him
from school--had started in the south. I eventually met him in Vermont
but I declined to hike with him because I knew, you know you-- It's
tough to be with someone; when you're hiking a trail like that, you're
with someone 24/7 and any little personality quirks will start to wear
on both people and I saw that in other people. Because I was never
alone on the trail, although I started alone I can count the number of
days I was alone on the fingers of one hand because there's that many
people out there doing it. Because you have day hikers, you've got
section hikers; of course you've got through hikers, not to mention
you know the occasional hunter and stuff. So yeah, I was, you know,
00:18:00always meeting people and what not and there's a whole little culture
that grows up along the trail and they've adopted a little trail
moniker and they've got a system. Along the trail there's a system
of free cycle lean-tos, which you can choose to sleep in if you want
or you can tent camp or whatever you want. But in each one there's a
register and that's how people communicate or at least this is in the
age before cell phones. But I'm sure now people carry cell phones.
But so there's a whole you know system of registers where people would
stay and write in the register so people can keep track of where people
are and if they're ahead of them. So that was, you know, memories
sweetened with time. I definitely enjoyed it but it was difficult.
I mean you've got to average at least twelve miles a day if you want
to do it in a reasonable time period and you know hiking south you've
got winter pushing you on in the south too. And I had the misfortune
00:19:00of getting--developing a shin splint in Pennsylvania. At that point I
was making big miles. Once you start hitting the Mid-Atlantic States,
the so-called boring states, you know versus the more glamorous states
like you know North Carolina, Virginia--or I guess Virginia's not.
But North Carolina, you know the southern and the northern portions
are more glamorous portions because there's more scenery and more
wildness and wilderness. But the Mid-Atlantic States like northern
Virginia and Pennsylvania and Maryland all that, it's just kind of
boring but it's flat and you can make major miles. So I was you know
averaging about twenty miles a day and I got really, really hungry; I
mean your appetite just goes through the roof. So I reached one road
crossing in Pennsylvania and it was just a matter of hitchhiking down
to the nearest town and getting some food and re-supplying and then
hitchhiking back up. Well in this particular-- And I had not had any
problem hitchhiking up to that point anywhere, but for some reason
00:20:00this stretch of road or that community or whatever nobody would pick me
up. And people had pickup trucks with beds; they didn't have to talk
to me. They could have thrown my grubby sweaty ass into the back of
that truck; they wouldn't have had to do anything to me. But no one,
I mean it was a busy road too, but nobody would pick me up so I had
to walk all the way down and I tried, and I bought some supplies and I
started hiking back up, and nobody would pick me up to take me all the
way back. So I kind of have a grudge against people in that part of
Pennsylvania. So in the course of doing that, it's one thing hiking
a trail, it's quite another to beat the pavement with a full pack and
that was all it took to give me a shin splint in my right leg. So when
I got to Maryland it was pretty painful and I started hearing of all
these horror stories about getting gangrene and stuff like that and I
was like, "Damn," you know because I really wanted to finish the trail.
So I laid up in D.C. at a cousin--a cousin of mine lives in D.C.
and he had just graduated from U.M.D. and was still living in College
Park--so I stayed with him for about a week and I just rested and hit
00:21:00the trail again and it hadn't healed. And I was pretty despondent at
that point until I reached a, in northern Virginia one of the trail
clubs that maintains the trail in that portion has a--not a hostel
but kind of a cabin that they maintain for their own members to get
away--and they had a person that they hired to just kind of oversee
that place, and I stayed there for about I think it was two or three
weeks. And it was just the greatest experience just being up there
because he's the greatest guy and he'd hiked the trail about two years
before and he had friends from his experience rolling through and there
were parties, we built a sweat lodge. He was always cooking up these
giant meals and he always had, you know, wine and beer and stuff like
that; it was just a great time. So that kind of lifted my spirits and
my leg felt strong enough that I ended up finishing the trail pretty
00:22:00late, I mean most people finished in October going south or November
but I finished in December. But I did finish with a pack of people
that were kind of late like I was. It was a good experience; I mean I
look fondly back on those days.
WILSON: And it gives you good stories to tell?
SITHER: Yeah, definitely.
WILSON: So you finished in December of '95?
SITHER: Yeah, December of '95 and then I moved back with my folks in
Lexington and I think actuall, you know, I think I had-- I remember now
that where I got the Peace Corps inspiration was sitting in my car in
Ashville waiting to go to punch the clock to go into this telemarketing
job and I heard a radio advertisement for Peace Corps and I'd never
given Peace Corps a thought. And I was like, "Peace Corps? Okay. I'm
going to look into that when I get back from the trail." And of course
00:23:00the whole time I was hiking the trail I was thinking about what I'm
going to do next and at the forefront was Peace Corps. So when I got
back I immediately applied and of course that's a long process. In
some ways that's good and some ways it's bad, but whatever the case.
It took me about six months before I knew I was going--before they
accepted me.
WILSON: And what was that process?
SITHER: I never met a soul. I did it all by correspondence and my
interview was with some lady in Chicago and she called me and had it
over the phone and then she was the one that placed me.
WILSON: You never talked to anybody here in Lexington or a recruiter
or anybody?
SITHER: You know what, I never talked to a recruiter; in fact, I had
never met anybody that had served in the Peace Corps until my Uncle
John who lives in D.C. he brought a friend of his down and it was
00:24:00around the holiday period or something like that at my grandmother's
or something like that. He said, "Well I want you to meet so and
so." And they served in the Peace Corps in the Caribbean, it was some
island like it was some you know posh post like St. Lucia or something
like that. And I don't remember much about our conversation except
that she, you know, basically led on that Peace Corps was you know,
it's what you make of it because you don't really do much. And that's
about all I can remember about that conversation. But of course that
went over my head, I was like, "You know I don't care. I want to do
this Peace Corps. It's exotic. It's foreign. It's you know and it's
philanthropic and whatever." So but other than that I had never met
anybody else that had been in Peace Corps or anything like that. I
mean in a lot of respects I'm the most unlikely Peace Corps volunteer
because I come from more of a military background. My brother who
00:25:00is younger than me is a captain in the Marine Corps. He's in Okinawa
right now but and of course my father and my grandfather and lots of
other relatives too. That's not to say that I gave the military any
thought; I definitely-- Military was not an option for me. I can't
take orders like that from people I don't trust, so that wasn't an
option for me. But anyway they accepted me and I hadn't given any
preferences about where to go and they said, "Well would you like to go
to Cameroon? It's a country in west central Africa, and you're going to
be doing agro-forestry work." I said yeah, I'll go.
WILSON: And so that would have been what, like the spring of--
SITHER: Spring/summer '96.
WILSON: '96.
SITHER: And then I went to Cameroon in October '96.
WILSON: And did you have some training and what kind of training and
00:26:00where was that?
SITHER: My training was all in country; we met in D.C.--the group. And
we all flew together as a group. There were three different programs
that I flew with: water sanitation, microgram--which is agro-forestry,
and I believe TEFL, teaching English as a foreign language.
WILSON: But all going to Cameroon?
SITHER: But all going to Cameroon at the same time and all experiencing
training together, and at that point-- You know, I guess, Peace Corps
has gone through quite a different philosophies and protocols about
training. At that point they were still in a more centralized mode
of training, so we were sent to a town called Ngaoundere, which is
00:27:00a town right smack dab in the central part of the country on the--in
the province called Adamawa on the Adamawa Plateau. It's kind of
a high, flat plateau with more kind of savannah like; it basically
separates the rainforest belt of southern Cameroon for the more arid
part north of there that kind of abuts the Sahel. So savannah with a
lot of mountains too, it's a very beautiful part of the country. And
Ngaoundere was a town; it wasn't a village it was a town of pretty
good size, kind of a commercial center. And we were parceled out to
host families to stay with but our training was at this training center
that we walked to every day or biked to or whatever, you know whatever
people wanted to do or took a taxi to. And my training was three
00:28:00months, October, November, December, and I guess we swore in maybe
early 1997 and then got to our posts maybe later on that month.
WILSON: And what did the training consist of?
SITHER: The training consist of first and foremost the French language
because Cameroon, although it's bilingual, it has a-- Out of ten
provinces two of them are English speaking, but the rest of the
country--the majority of the people are francophone or French speaking.
And that's a whole story in and of itself; there's kind of a-- It's
kind of like Canada in reverse where the English speaking minority
is the repressed minority. At that point nobody knew where they were
going so you had to learn some French. And I believe I took French
00:29:00until they gave us our post placements and I knew I was going to be
in the English speaking zone. So at that point they started teaching
me pidgin English, actually you can't really call it Pidgin English
although it has a lot of English in it and English is the basis of that
language, but it is a language in and of itself--Pidgin. It's all over
West Africa, but the brand that's in Cameroon is pretty unique and it's
even unique from neighboring Nigeria. So we learned that and also,
of course, the technical part of our training, I was supposed to be
ago-forestry extension agent so they were teaching us about the various
types of interventions to teach farmers you know basic types of soil
erosion interventions, contour, bund building, how to site contours,
the various types of species that you can use for green manure to build
00:30:00up the soil, what we called improved fallows--which is using these
seasonal legumes to build up the soil. And also, you know, learning
about different, learning about their agricultural systems, which
vary from region to region, and that was kind of tough but actually in
Ngaoundere it was kind of a good microcosm of the country because it
straddled the climate zone so you basically saw all different types of
agriculture. All you had to do was walk around the local neighborhood
and you would see all kinds of stuff because it was also a very
cosmopolitan town because there was a lot of civil servants there and
merchants and what not. And so it was kind of a place where people
from all over Cameroon kind of converged. And they--
WILSON: A cultural component as well?
SITHER: Obviously, they'd always-- Of course you know it was understood
that with your host family, communicating with them and living with
00:31:00them and eating with them, conversing with them, you know, going to
social functions with them, you would learn that. But also there was
in the training itself, you know we would always have these workshops
or seminars talking about culture, cultural issues you might come into
as related to gender or customs or attitude toward death, you know
funerals, that kind of thing.
WILSON: So your training was three months, you got sworn in and served
in '97 and then what?
SITHER: Sworn in and sent to post.
WILSON: And what was your job?
SITHER: My job? Well, like I said before, my job was extending ago-
forestry to subsistence farmers. And my post was in the northwest
province, which is one of the English speaking provinces that borders
00:32:00Nigeria, and it's a mountainous area. Right next to me was a close
to 10,000 foot extinct volcano with a volcanic crater lake next to
it, very beautiful area, densely populated, very, very agricultural.
Because of the volcanic soil, it was able to support historically
a higher population density than any other areas. And my post was
called Bamkika'ay but basically really my post was Kumbo town, which
was a town of about 80,000 people so-- And Bamkika'ay was, although it
was basically a quarter of the village ----------(??) it was so close
to Kumbo and Kumbo had expanded so much, it was basically more of a
part of Kumbo. So-- And I had inherited this post with, there had
00:33:00been three previous volunteers, and I overlapped just for about three
days with my predecessor and he showed me all the people I needed to
know, helped me. I guess he didn't help me do any protocol with the
local ministries like the ministry of agriculture and the ministry of
environment; I had to do that by myself. But he took me around all the
farmers that he had had success with and got me on my feet as far as
that's concerned so.
WILSON: So what was your living situation like?
SITHER: My living situation was pretty comfortable. I had a house, I
had a compound which consisted of a house. And in Cameroon everyone
has what's called a country kitchen, which is a building where you do
your cooking inside of this room and there's no flue or no chimney to
00:34:00carry the smoke out; you just sit there next to the fire. So I had
a country kitchen with an adjoining room where I hired a young man to
stay and basically be my "wife," in other words--do all my dishes, do
all the cleaning, and stuff like that.
WILSON: Wash your clothes?
SITHER: What we call a houseboy. You know it's not politically correct
but he was a houseboy so, which is good you know. It gives somebody
you know, who wouldn't otherwise have an income a source of income.
So I had a garden you know in the front of my place, I had a garden in
the back, I had this--what I called a sanctuary. I had this beautiful
little tree canopied area where I planted some grass and had my fire
pit and stuff like that when I had parties and sat out there and-- But
it was very comfortable. I had running water; I had one spigot outside
and no running water inside or any toilet. I had a pit latrine but I
00:35:00was very comfortable.
WILSON: Electricity?
SITHER: I had electricity. If I wanted to I could have hooked up a
phone but at that point you know, what's the point? So I was outside of
a major town where I could get, even at that point 1997, I could even
get access to the internet. They even had a supermarket there where
I could get cheese, dairy, anything I wanted in terms of western food.
And of course they had a market there that was an every day market.
WILSON: Did you have access to a computer?
SITHER: Yeah, I would go-- What they would have-- There was a little
business where you could go and have you know documents typed up or you
00:36:00could make a phone call or whatever, and one of those businesses had
a few PCs and so whenever I needed to use a computer I would-- But at
that point I was not-- I didn't have, I wasn't into email so I didn't
use the web at all at that point but I did use a computer.
WILSON: What was the most difficult adjustment to living in Cameroon?
SITHER: Without a doubt the most difficult, you know people talk about
food and comfort--creature comforts and stuff like that. Mine was just
interpersonal issues with Cameroonians. You know it's all about you
know, there's different cultures all around the world and you have to
00:37:00feel out cultures before you kind of know what to expect and what you
can say and what can't you say and that kind of thing. And even though
I had had the cultural part of my training, I still had to adjust to
the local reality of my site. Because Cameroon is really a, you know
it's a country, I forget how big it is; I think it's the size of Texas,
but there's over 250 different languages. And we're talking about not
just dialects; we're talking about mutually unintelligible languages
and every one having its own culture to boot. So it's-- They call
it Africa in miniature because not only do you have everything from
rainforest to the Sahel and mountains and every climate and every type
of biome, ecological biome, but culturally too it straddles central
Africa and western Africa which have completely different cultures.
And it kind of has aspects of both those cultures, and in addition to
00:38:00that you've got you know the Sahara with that influence too, and you've
got Christianity and you've got Islam and stuff. So I had to adjust
to the local culture and I think definitely that was the hardest part,
yeah. Because I'm-- creature comforts, food, I'm really adjustable;
I can roll with any punch as far as that goes. But it was mainly just
interpersonal type issues.
WILSON: And I guess maybe this is along the same line, what then would
you say you were prepared for and what weren't you prepared for?
SITHER: I wasn't prepared for people taking advantage of me. I remember
00:39:00when I got sworn in, we went to the capitol city Yaounde. I was
with some volunteers sitting at the local bar and there was a pretty
cynical volunteer who actually was posted near me and we were just
all, you know, sitting around this round table just drinking our beers.
And he turns to me and goes, "You know you can't trust any of these
Cameroonians." You know I was kind of taken aback, you know. I had
heard some stories you know, because we had site visits too. I mean
I site visited with a volunteer from the southwest province, so I got
an inkling of what it's like to be a volunteer and the kind of social
situations you find yourself in. But I mean I guess I was really naive
still at that point and that kind of took me aback. That's not to say
00:40:00that no you can't trust all Cameroonians, but Cameroon is a pretty wild
and wooly place in that respect. There's a lot of opportunistic people
there and it's a very opportunistic culture, and you have to be on
your guard. And there's various ways that you know people would try to
steer you in one direction or another. It's-- I don't know.
WILSON: Okay, what would a typical day have been like for you as a
volunteer?
SITHER: There was no typical day. There would be typical days-- Because
00:41:00I would, either I was at my post-- And if I was at my post I might be
doing some work, I might not. I could also be in provincial capital
Bamenda, which is a beautiful city, one of the nicer towns in that part
of the country. And all us volunteers in the northwest province pooled
our money and rented a very nice house with a walled in compound and
a guy to take care of it so that whenever we came to the provincial
capital, we'd have a place to sleep and we'd get a shower, you know
go out. And of course there's more western food if you crave that; at
that point I didn't care, I could eat anything. But and it was a way
station. Because to get to the capital from where I was-- For most
people to get to the capital where Peace Corps administration was was
at least a two day journey. You could get there in one but it would
be quite a long haul and you would get there really late and it's
00:42:00you know not that fun to try and get a taxi that late with a bunch of
cargo. So that was like a way station. It was also a place where we
would all converge as volunteers to socialize with other volunteers
and stuff. I would either be there or I rarely went to the capitol.
I was there for three years; I went to the capital more times in
my third year than I did my first two years. I just didn't-- I just
avoided Peace Corps administration. I had a lot personality conflicts
with them and we had different philosophies so I just kept them at
an arm's length. Or I could be in the other large city in Cameroon,
which is Douala which is the commercial center. Go down there and
then there you've got everything under the sun. You've got really
nice hotels that you stay in or you know French food, boulangeries,
great grilled fish, great braised, I mean roasted chicken, whatever
00:43:00you know. Not the safest place to be but a lot of fun and there's good
markets there and stuff like that. Or I would be any place around the
country traveling, visiting volunteers and visiting. They had a game
park in the north called Waza where you could go and see your, you
know, your giraffes, your lions, your elephants and stuff like that.
Or there's various rainforest treks you could do, various mountains
to climb. Mount Cameroon is a volcano in the southwest province,
it's 14,000 feet. Guinness Beer sponsors a race to the top of this
mountain every year, and it's pretty much every volunteer goes down
and climbs this mountain. It's kind of neat, you go everything from--
It's got rainforest at the bottom, mountain forest, then you go through
a savannah belt, and then you've got a like a not an alpine but close,
a sub-alpine type of environment. So it's kind of neat to get up
on top there. And when you do reach your peak if you are very, very
lucky you can see into Nigeria. You can see Malabo, which is a part of
00:44:00equatorial actually, yeah it's part of Equatorial Guinea. And that's
a series of two volcanoes in the ocean, and that view is just insanely
gorgeous over the ocean. So there was no typical day I would be-- But
if I was post--
WILSON: You were saying if you were at post, you would be?
SITHER: Yes, I don't want to let off that I'm, you know, spent very
little time at post. I spent a majority of my time at post, but-- And
even there was no typical day there. I mean sometimes if I wasn't busy
that day I would go to the market and just meet up with people and go
to the local membo house. Membo is any type of alcoholic beverage.
And in Cameroon in addition to beer, which is ubiquitous even in
the bush, I mean you can get a big ole 65 cent liter beer, you know,
00:45:00anywhere. But there's also the indigenous drinks, you know palm wine
and corn beer. So I would just meet up with people and just go to a
bar and shoot the shit, what they call-- You know it's a bar, sometimes
you call an off-license. A harking from back in the day is when you
know they actually licensed these bars and stuff like that. But or I
would choose a market day. Now in that part of Cameroon or that tribe,
they have what's called a traditional week. It's an eight day week as
opposed to a seven day week. And I would carry around a little pocket
calendar with me so I could tell which traditional day it was. And
in their eight day week they would have various market days for towns
around that division. I guess division would translate to county here.
00:46:00And most of the smaller villages had one market day and it would be on
one of those traditional days. There were some markets that would fall
on a specific seven day weekday like Saturday or Sunday or something
like that. But most of the market--
WILSON: Side two of tape one of Peace Corps Oral History interview with
Robin Sither on December 2, 2004. Robin, you were talking about market
days and--
SITHER: Yeah, market days so--
WILSON: And the purpose of your interest in the market days was?
00:47:00
SITHER: Market days were very good means of reaching people. I would
always take an intermediary and what we called our farmer leaders. The
whole idea behind the project that we had, agro-forestry extension, was
to work ourselves out of a job by grooming what we call farmer leaders
to take over our position once we had you know basically saturated the
area with information. And those would be like resource people that
would carry on the quote unquote agro-forestry message. So market days
were great ways to meet new people and new farmers to try and get them
to give it a shot or come and see examples of it. And of course you
know that's also protocol. You know when you go to these things, they
see you out, they know what you're about, you know they don't think
00:48:00you're some stuffy guy that's driving around in a Land Cruiser with
air conditioning or whatever. They see that you're out and about and
you're down with the customs and what not. So they warm up to you and
then they, once they see you in other situations, they are quicker to--
WILSON: So you had some demonstration farms or farmers that--
SITHER: Yes.
WILSON: As well that you would take new people to?
SITHER: I would always work with-- There are church groups, you have
social groups, you've got-- I lived in an area which was predominantly
Christian but had a lot of Muslims there, or the Muslim groups.
You have what's called njang which is a phenomenon that's all over
Cameroon. In fact, it's something you see here in the States with some
00:49:00immigrant groups. It's where you have a group of people and you meet
either once a week or once a month, and everyone pools their money and
gives it to one of the people. And you know in places where there is
very little credit or available credit, that's an access to a large
lump some of money that you can, you know, do something with like start
a small business or something like that. So they have what's called
injangis (??). Now most of those were mainly social groups. I mean
they would meet and the whole idea is that you bring, you know, ten
liters of palm wine or something like that. Everyone throws a little
100 franc piece in, which is very little money. So it was kind of more
of a social thing, but there were other injangis (??) that were more
serious and they would actually throw down some real serious money. So
those are all-- Because the whole idea was to reach as many people as
possible and in that you might reach a few couple serious people. So
I was always meeting with those groups. You do an animation, you get
00:50:00up in front a chalkboard or your invite them out, you arrange for some
food and some palm wine or whatever corn beer. And I had some existing
demonstrations at that point left over from my predecessors and I
would bring them in and we would do some animations on some hands on
stuff such as building an A frame level so that you can cite a contour
across and mark a contour across a slope. Or building a nursery or out
planting seedlings or building contour buns, how to cut and incorporate
green manure into you know your field or whatever; it would be all
kinds of stuff.
WILSON: And were you working mostly with men?
SITHER: I worked with women as well. In that part of Cameroon,
farming is the woman's domain. That's an interesting shift because
00:51:00traditionally men, the role of men was to clear the fields for the
women to farm. And they would have their own trade or they would hunt
to provide for the family. But this is a very densely populated area
and there's no game left, well at least not that you could depend on.
So there's really no farms for them to clear because all the land is
clear. So they're kind of left-- And traditionally it is the woman's
role to actually bend down and work the farm, dig-- And because it's
very, very labor intensive; they have no animal traction in that part
of the world mainly because of the slope but also because-- Of course
there's a whole history about why there's no animal traction in Africa
00:52:00and they say it's because of the tsetse fly and sleeping sickness, but
whatever the case it's pretty labor intensive. I mean they have these
wide handled or these wide bladed hoes that they basically bend down
at the waist and dig the soil with; it's really labor intensive. And
you would think that men would participate but traditionally that's
not their role to participate. So what happened was that missionaries
I believe brought in the cultivation of coffee as a cash crop and that
was wildly successful for a long time because they grow-- This is in
the highlands; my post was at 2,000 meters which is about 6,000 ft. so
this was up in the highlands, very pleasant place to be climatically.
No extremes of hot or cold although it would get pretty cold, almost
close to freezing, but you never have a frost. So Arabica coffee,
00:53:00which is the best type of coffee, grows there. And for a long time
that was a very good, reliable income generator up until about the
early '90s. And then what happened was I guess-- Well, in more recent
years what has happened is countries like Vietnam have been dumping
Robusta coffee, which is the cheaper version, in large quantities on
the world market. And what that did was depress the price of coffee
so low that people were just abandoning their coffee orchards and just
letting them grow up or just not tending them or not even picking the
beans or whatever because it just wasn't even worth it to fool with it.
And so that left men with basically nothing to do.
WILSON: So they had worked the coffee?
SITHER: They were the ones that worked the coffee and they would always
work the coffee around their own compound and make the women go out
in the fields and have to trek about a mile or two or three or four
00:54:00to work the farms. Well, once the coffee price hit bottom they were
left with nothing to do. Now in other parts of Cameroon, either they
had always been working--men always worked--or they in the wake of
that recession, if you will, they started working the farm. But in
my corner of Cameroon, although there were a lot men working the farm,
it was still a little bit of a resistance on their part to-- they
definitely looked down on it. So the majority of farmers were women,
but the interesting this is the whole thing about agro-forestry is that
you're trying to get people to do sustainable farming on a permanent
farm. And in their system of farming, a given family would have four,
00:55:00five different little plots that would be scattered to the four winds.
And they would go work one plot, get that finished and plant it or
whatever, and they worked in the next plot and worked like that and
come back and weave the next one and just rotate like that. And so
most of the time these little plots were-- The idea of land ownership
is really vague there. Traditionally you have what are called
landlords, but they don't call them landlords but that's basically
what they are. And the traditional landlords and you would just go and
what they call "begging a farm;" you go beg a farm by visiting one of
these land lords--these traditional chiefs--and you present a rooster,
a chicken or whatever and about ten liters of palm wine. And then he
would go out and he would stake out a plot for you and that was your
plot. But that wasn't really your plot; that was just your plot until
he decided to give it to somebody else. So land tenure was a very big
00:56:00impediment to this idea of improving this land because it's not your
land really and I mean you're not sure whether it's going to be in
your possession indefinitely. So but the issue is gender, and women
definitely very rarely would own a piece of land. Now you would have
men that would own farms and it happened that most of the people that
I worked with that were successful with the agro-forestry were men who
owned their land, or women who were married to men that owned the land
and they worked it, or people with substantial means enough to purchase
a farm, that they cared enough about it to start thinking about a
permanent farming system. So that really limited the number of people
00:57:00that I could actually motivate to do these interventions. And that's
pretty sad because really I mean the whole sustainable farming system
is predicated on having a permanent farm, but yet the land tenure
system was such that there wasn't much of that. So that's really a
fault of the project design on the part of Peace Corps in the way that
they, you know, constructed the whole construct.
WILSON: Peace Corps and the host country I assume.
SITHER: Well that's another story. I mean supposedly we're supposed
to be working with the Ministry of Agriculture and we were supposed
to be allied with their local extension agents. But those people
00:58:00were wildly unmotivated because Cameroon-- The government is not that
reliable in paying their salaries and people are always having to
chase arrears, going to the capital and chasing down the salaries that
they're not receiving or whatever like that. So not only that but
you know they were promised motorcycles and what not, and they weren't
getting those, and they were just-- You know they might do a little
work but they weren't serious about it and they tended not to be from
that area; they tended to be people that I think took a-- If not had a
degree from the agricultural university that several-- They have quite
a few universities in Cameroon and several of them have agricultural
programs. They tended to be graduates from those programs and so with
the university degree they kind of looked down on the fact that they've
had to take this agricultural extension position with very low pay and
00:59:00no means and you know that kind of thing. So when you say the host
country, yeah, yeah, but you know there's no way we could have worked
with these people because they didn't care and they always came from
somewhere else so they didn't care about their community.
WILSON: So you had general interaction on a daily basis with host
country people and in your job.
SITHER: Yeah, socially.
WILSON: And socially.
SITHER: You know there's a gray area there anyway.
WILSON: What about interaction with other foreign nationals or other
Americans?
SITHER: Yeah, I was, yeah my community-- Kumbo has two different, it's
pretty lucky in the fact that it has two different hospitals, one of
them being a Catholic hospital and one of them being a Baptist hospital
and there are always people from Canada or the United States or various
01:00:00English speaking countries around the world coming there you know
and people doing their, I don't know, residencies or whatever, you
know internships or what not. So there were always people at those
places. The Catholic mission would always have people coming from the
States or whatever or Europe or whatever. Development workers were
few in that part of the country. But you'd see westerners on, if not
a daily basis, on every other day or whatever. I didn't really-- Also
missionaries too, Church of Christ, I knew two Baptist missionaries
who-- he Baptist missionaries lived up in the grazing lands; they had
these government delineated grazing lands and they lived up there. And
01:01:00they were the pastoral people in the northwest province or the Mbororo
people and they are a member of the Fulbe tribe. And I don't know if
you're familiar with the Fulbes but they are the pastoral people that
are all over West Africa. And their language Fulbe you can go probably
anywhere in that region--
WILSON: Called Fulani elsewhere.
SITHER: Fulani; Fulani is the Hausa name for the Fulbe people and
Fulani. You can call it the Fulani language too. So this is the
nomadic element of that and in this particular part of the country or
Cameroon they were encouraged to settle down, and so they put them in
these government delineated grazing land. So they missioned to those
people, and he was actually a large animal veterinarian so he would
work with them and their cows and stuff like that and give like a
gospel lesson or something like that before he did that. So there were
always westerners. I would come into contact with them but I made no
01:02:00great effort to because I had mainly dealt with Cameroonians and then
Peace Corps volunteers. I didn't really deal much with--
WILSON: And I think you said early that you traveled around the country
some.
SITHER: Quite a bit. I saw every province except the east province so.
WILSON: Did you travel outside of Cameroon during your time?
SITHER: No I did not. Most of the countries around Cameroon are not
places you want to go to. They had evacuated Chad; they had evacuated
the Central African Republic; they had evacuated Congo Brazzaville.
There were volunteers in Gabon; that was a place you could go but
you wouldn't want to because that's just-- It's not any different
from Cameroon really. Equatorial Guinea; I don't think we had any
volunteers there. That was just a-- I went to right across the river
from Equatorial Guinea and I came really close to Nigeria but I never
01:03:00went. And of course Nigeria you don't want to go to unless you want
to throw your life on the line. But no I did not leave Cameroon during
that point.
WILSON: And I believe you said earlier that you were there three years.
Tell me something about your motivation for extension or what you did
that third year.
SITHER: I did quite a lot that third year but my morale was very low.
My motivation to extend was basically I had nothing, I had not really
thought about what I was going to do next and I was really comfortable
in Cameroon at that point. And I wanted to see a lot of the projects
that I had started come to fruition. My real aim was, since I was a
what--one, two, three--fourth volunteer, I wanted to close out that
01:04:00post. I wanted to and I did. At the end of my third year I convinced
the APCD [Peace Corps associate director] or whatever it was, the Agro
Forestry--yeah I guess it is APCD, and he was convinced that yeah the
agro forestry had gone on far enough or as far as anyone could take
it in that area and then he would close it. Now he rescinded that and
about I think a year later he put someone not specifically in my post
but in an adjacent part of Kumbo that was basically my post, but that's
another story. But yeah, my motivation to extend to a third year was
I was very comfortable, I wanted to see some of our projects come to
fruition, but also I had really nothing going at home. I was like I
didn't know what I was going to do next so I was like, "Well it's just
easier. Pick a path of least resistance and just extend a third year."
Now what happened was I-- I don't know if-- Now other volunteers who
01:05:00have served in Africa during this point will no about the prophylactics
called mefloquine also known by the name larium. Now I had been
taking-- That's a pretty famous drug and what you do--
WILSON: For malaria suppression.
SITHER: Yeah, malaria prophylaxis. Now I believe there has been a class
action lawsuit against it in England; I think was it the-- I think they
called it the Twinkie defense or something like that; some principal
embezzled some money from a school or something like that and blamed
it on Twinkies and it turned out he was taking larium and then he I
guess he blamed it on the larium or something like that. But it's a
pretty famous drug for being psychoactive. They've had instances where
volunteers have completely wigged out and went psychotic on just taking
you know one or two doses or something like that. In my case I seemed
to tolerate it pretty well but what happened was when I extended for
01:06:00a third year I was coming home and I felt, and I had malaria before.
Actually in my whole time in Cameroon I never ever tested positive
for malaria, you know they still had the rudimentary you know you prick
your finger, you make your own slide of your blood; and then they come
and you send that to a lab and they have to look under a microscope and
see if they can't see the organism. And that's not the most reliable
method because you know the reservoir for the malaria is inside your
liver and other organs and it's not necessarily present in your blood.
But it comes out into the bloodstream, so it's not a reliable thing.
So I never actually tested positive for malaria the whole time I was
there but I had episodes that were obviously malaria. And so what
happened was I extended for the third year and I was coming home from
my home stay or whatever you call it, which is a month when you're
01:07:00at home.
WILSON: Break between tours.
SITHER: Yeah, break between tours, whatever. And I started coming down
with malaria. I mean the night before we're supposed to board the
plane I'm like, "Oh my god, I can't. This is a long flight. You've
got to fly to Paris and then you've got to fly whatever it is, New York
or Philadelphia, and then I've got to fly to Kentucky." So I just-- No
way I can make it. So the standard procedure was if you felt like you
might be getting malaria was to take a three dose therapeutic thing
of fansidar, which is a sulfa drug that I think by now there's a lot
of resistance to it, and I think even then there was but-- And then
the whole idea is you take that as a precaution against-- Because the
falciparum type of malaria in Africa is-- You know there's of course
different types of malaria. I think there's ovale, there's like
malariae and there's like one other, and then there's falciparum. Well
falciparum is about 99.99% of the malaria in Africa. Falciparum is not
01:08:00found elsewhere; it's the most fatal form of malaria and if you-- It can
take you down. So the idea is that you take the fansidar and then you
prick your finger and you make your slide and then you seek treatment.
So I was like, "Shit, I'm going on this plane. I don't want to stick
around. I want to get home, so I hope this fansidar takes care of it."
Well it didn't. I think it suppressed it enough until I got home and
then I started coming down with it. So I was like, "Hell, what the
hell am I going to do? Because hospitals here, they don't know anything
about Malaria." So in Where There is No Doctor, which is the famous
book you know about you know bush medicine or whatever, it had what
they called a therapeutic dose of mefloquine where you can take five
tablets and it should take care of anything. Well I took those five
01:09:00tablets and I completely wigged out, I mean I was--
WILSON: And by this point you were in Lexington?
SITHER: At this point I was in the States, in Lexington, and I
completely wigged out. I mean my blood pressure rose, I was having
severe-- I had never had a nightmare in my life. I had severe
nightmares; I was talking in my sleep; I was just completely wigging
out. And it was quite a few days until I felt normal. I mean my heart
was just racing, I mean it just, it was unbelievable. It was the most
uncomfortable I've ever been. But it kind of subsided but I never
quite regained my same inner constitution if you will. I mean I was a
little tweaked at that point and so that was what I was like going back
to Cameroon. And that put a whole damper on that whole year; it was
01:10:00just because like I said before, it's a pretty famous drug for being
psychoactive. I mean it definitely changes your perspective and it
definitely made me at least minorly depressed and a little aggressive
and irritable and that definitely put a damper on my year. But
actually my third year was very productive; I did quite a lot. And
one of which was obtaining funding for a grinding mill for a group and
installing the grinding mill so that they could grind both their flour
and also animal feed and stuff like that but among other things. But
yeah that definitely put a damper on the whole third year.
WILSON: Are there other particularly meaningful memories of your time in
01:11:00Cameroon or stories, adventures of your travels, or particular success
stories on some of the farm or farmers that you worked with?
SITHER: There's nothing that really sticks out in my mind. There's a
lot of-- You know I wish I had kept a diary. I didn't keep a diary
and I really regret that because there were just-- The memories are
starting to fade already and I'm like, "Wait a minute here, I'm not
that old." I really should have kept-- Because there's just in any
given day you would experience something that would just make you
chuckle or just laugh out loud or whatever and just Cameroonians really
have-- They're really-- They enjoy humor and they really have the gift
of gab, and if you know anything about African languages-- I didn't
learn a local dialect and the reason was is because there's really no
01:12:00point. I mean the people were so literate and they knew English so
well and not to mention the fact that that dialect was useless once you
left that area, which is you know a very, very small area. So I didn't
bother even learning a dialect. But those languages are basically
strings of proverbs and Pidgin itself is very proverbial. I mean it's
just strings of proverbs; they use metaphors and when you get in these
conversations with people they can be very, very entertaining just to
use Pidgin and throw a little bit of the dialect in there too. There's
a lot of little day to day interactions, you know meeting people in
the market and you know dragging them over to a palm wine house and
just having conversation, and dragging other people-- You see people
outside and you bring them in or if you're out in the village and you
see somebody doing something you'd go join in and you know a group
01:13:00would gather and it's just a lot of little things like that. In terms
of my work, I actually had quite a lot of success but you know I set
the bar pretty high for myself. I mean I didn't have any quote unquote
secondary projects. I was completely devoted to doing this because
I believed in the agro forestry. So I didn't do-- I guess you could
call my grinding mill a project in my third year, you could call that a
secondary project I guess. But either I was doing my job or I was you
know socializing or I was traveling. There was no secondary project
or anything like that and so I was pretty committed to, and I had some
pretty good successes with it especially relative to a lot of the other
volunteers. Now a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was in a
large area around a town, so there's just a simple population density
you're going to reach quite a lot of people. And out of those people
it's just a matter of probability you're going to reach some people who
01:14:00are you, you know forward thinking and resourceful enough to say, "Well
this is something that I want to try," stuff like that so--
WILSON: You were saying you wish you had kept a diary. Did you write
letters home?
SITHER: Yeah I did but the thing is people need context to understand
your stories. So most of the letters I wrote home were very
superficial, very superficial because you need context to understand.
I mean I wouldn't tell stories-- In fact when I got home I would try
to tell stories that I thought were cool and they'd, you know they'd
go right over their head because they didn't have the context and stuff
like that, as opposed to getting together with another volunteer that
had the same situation and you can relate and they can really relate
to it.
WILSON: So you came home. What was coming home like and how did you
come home?
SITHER: I didn't come straight home.
01:15:00
WILSON: Okay, tell me about that.
SITHER: What is it you can take?
WILSON: You would have finished up then in--
SITHER: I finished up--
WILSON: 2000?
SITHER: Yeah, early 2000, late 1999 early 2000. Yeah I was in Cameroon
and experienced the millennium changeover. I was watching CNN when
that happened expecting the lights to go out or something like that
but nothing happened. But what is it, you can take part of your return
home allowance in cash in country? I think that's what it is, and I
chose to do that and I took that money along with the local currency
that I saved up and converted that into dollars and--
WILSON: Let me stop you there long enough so that you'll tell us what
your actual living allowance in country was, what that was supposed to
01:16:00cover, and then what your readjustment or your return funding was from
the Peace Corps. Do you remember that?
SITHER: I don't know what my living allowance was in American dollars.
I really don't. Maybe $300 a month maybe, I don't know. The
readjustment allowance I believe is like $3000 or something like that;
it's based on your service maybe.
WILSON: A year or?
SITHER: I think it's between-- At that point it was like between $800
and $1000 for every year that you're serving or something like that
maybe. I can't--
WILSON: Well anyway, go ahead. You were telling me you took some of
that money and--
SITHER: But you know your living allowance they pay you way too much.
I mean this whole philosophy of paying just enough to live with the
locals at their level was a joke. I was able to bank a lot of cash
and I wasn't you know that frugal so. And I converted that into cash,
took my part of a portion of my readjustment allowance and converted
01:17:00that into cash and travelers checks. And I bought a ticket to Zimbabwe
and with the aim of traveling around southern Africa and then from
there flying out of South Africa to Europe and touring around Europe
and then going home. So it's kind of interesting the first leg of
my trip was flying from Cameroon to Zimbabwe and I flew Air Cameroon
or Cameroon Air; it was pretty fun airline to fly. But on the way to
Zimbabwe we stopped in Kinshasa, Zaire; at that point Kinshasa, Congo.
And this is in 2000 so Kabila was still in power in Congo. He had
you know of course I guess seven years earlier or, no not that long,
but about three years earlier had deposed Mobutu and installed himself
01:18:00in a coup or a revolution, whatever you want to call it. So we were
at Kinshasa airport and we were I guess waiting to pick up some more
passengers to go onto Harare, Zimbabwe and all of a sudden this whole
caravan of Mercedes pulls up; it was black late model Mercedes sedans,
all of them alike about 15 of them pulled up. And I was like, "What
the hell is going? There must be somebody VIP here." And then a band
comes out, they roll out a red carpet and a podium, and they have these
dancers. And I'm like, "Man, there's something going on here." And
all of a sudden I see this Air Zimbabwe plane taxi up and lo and behold
President Mugabe of Zimbabwe rolls up off the plane and Kabila comes
out on the carpet. I'm sitting there on the tarmac looking from the
01:19:00window on the plane watching this right in front of my eyes, you know
Kabila coming out to meet Mugabe. And they had the whole protocol you
know there on the spot. And I guess at that point that was when Mugabe
was supporting Kabila because he wanted a stake in the mining interest
and all that stuff like that. It was kind of a corrupt affair but--
And this is before, right before Zimbabwe-- And of course from then I
went to Harare, Zimbabwe and this is right before Zimbabwe imploded.
I don't know if you're familiar with the story but basically Mugabe's
become a despot and has refused to let go of power and to solidify his
power he has done all kinds of crazy things like basically shut the
country off to the outside world and all kinds of stuff. And so what
01:20:00was once a pretty prosperous country is now apparently a-- But at that
point it was just right before that happened, so I saw Zimbabwe when
it was still a nice, you know, fairly you know together country. So
I just did a typical tourist thing in Zimbabwe. I went to the Eastern
Highlands, I went to Victoria Falls, and what are those ruins there? I
forget what they're called. It's whatever is on the Zimbabwe--
WILSON: The Great Zimbabwe.
SITHER: The Great Zimbabwe, yeah. And from there I, at this point I was
traveling with a Canadian guy I met there who had just finished-- They
don't have Peace Corps but they have-- He was the teacher in Malawi
and was basically like a Peace Corps type of situation and he was done
with his tour and he was in Zimbabwe kind of tooling around. So he
and I joined this overland safari trek and were-- You had this open bed
01:21:00truck, a large open bed truck with a tent canopy over that, and a group
of people and a cook, and they would take you across. And the idea
was we would go across Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa, and stop at
all these game parks and you know various places and stuff like that.
So we did that, went to places like Okavango Delta, the Etosha Pan
National Park in Namibia, various other places, and then ended up in
Cape Town, South Africa where it ended. And then from there I traveled
up the coast to various places along the coast and took a scuba diving,
got my scuba diving certification in Port Elizabeth for $100. Four
days of shore diving and boat diving for just $100 and I jumped on
that, and first rate instruction too. I mean South Africa is a first
01:22:00world country basically, I mean first world country with basically
a lot of poor people in it, but the infrastructure is first rate.
So then traveled up the coast to Durban, I hitchhiked inland to the
Drakensburg Mountains. I heard about a music festival there so I went
there and actually met some Peace Corps volunteers from Lesotho and
as it turns out they knew Tara. But hitchhiked back out to the coast
and went to-- I actually hitchhiked into Lesotho too just briefly.
It was really, really cold and desolate and I thought I'd spend one
night there and left. But then I went up to Swaziland, spent a couple
days there, and then I flew out of Johannesburg to London. And then
I stayed with someone there that I met in South Africa and I tooled
01:23:00around London and then I went on a whirlwind, really, really quick tour
of Europe. Went down to Spain, went to Paris, went to Venice, went
to Munich, went to Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam, various places and then
flew out of London back to the States. And I didn't book a flight from
JFK; I just got to JFK and thought I could just buy a cheap ticket to
Lexington. Well, same day tickets are pretty darn expensive. So I
was like, "I don't want to spend that money." So I just took the subway
down to Penn Station and took an Amtrak train to Cleveland and then did
Greyhound to Lexington. So that's how I ended up back home.
WILSON: So how was it readjusting to the United States?
SITHER: It wasn't easy. I think I had a pretty typical readjustment
01:24:00experience. America definitely changed a lot since when I left. That
was during that whole Clinton boom and you know the whole dot.com thing
had exploded and the internet was just going wild and, you know, people
were still full of optimism and stuff like that. This was pre 9/11
you know, and you know that's-- And with all that prosperity, people
had become a lot more materialistic and there's a lot more conspicuous
consumption and here I was. I mean I was always raised to be very
frugal and thrifty and I've never really had a care in the world as far
as material possessions and stuff. And going to Cameroon and seeing
01:25:00people living with a lot less than I had to begin with and then coming
home and realizing that you really don't need that much to live on
and then seeing all this going on was kind of disconcerting. Although
I had kind of an inkling of that when I came home for my home visit
and visited some friends down in various places, but that for me was
pretty difficult and just you know, and of course the whole thing about
relating to people and trying, you know, getting the stock question,
"Well, how was Africa?" or "How was Cameroon? How was Peace Corps?" You
know and you know how you answer that question in a nutshell and make
it seem like it's nothing.
WILSON: And so what did you do after you came back to Lexington and what
are you doing now?
SITHER: Right now I work for Alltech Inc. which is a biotechnology
company and it's a privately owned company. It's international and
they own a microbrewery in Lexington called Lexington Brewing Company.
01:26:00And so I am one of the brewers. I started working for Alltech about
I guess maybe six months after I got back from Peace Corps, and in that
period I had when I got home I traveled around the States a little bit
to visit some friends and family, got back and I started. Held down a
couple other piddly jobs before I got that job, so that's what I've had
ever since.
WILSON: Okay, what do you think the impact of your Peace Corps service
was on Cameroon or the people that you worked with there?
SITHER: You know the old cliche is that, about Peace Corps, is that you
always benefit more than they do because they give you a lot more than
you give them. And that's definitely the case for me. But especially
01:27:00in light of the fact that Peace Corps has been active not only in
Cameroon but in that specific area where I served since at least like--
You know, I guess the first volunteers went to Ghana in 1961. Well
the first volunteers went to Cameroon in 1962, and I think they even
went to my area if not that year maybe a year later. So there's always
been a long Peace Corps presence in Kumbo and various villages around.
The fact that they even had a provincial office in Bamenda back in the
day, this is before it was hard to get the capital. So they even had a
larger presence in the northwest province than they did now. And while
I was there in Cameroon there were, and I think there still are, at
least 150 volunteers in that country, which is quite a bit considering
01:28:00the size of the country. And in my case it wasn't clustered that much.
I mean I had neighbors I could get to in about you know 30 minutes
or so if I wanted to--Peace Corps neighbors. But I definitely wasn't
clustered with any other volunteers in that respect. But as far as
the impact of me on Cameroon, that's hard to say. Like I say, I was
fourth in line of, you know, four volunteers. Another volunteer ended
up succeeding me and working on my work. I've since heard from some of
farmers from Cameroon that she--
WILSON: But you did work yourself out of a job? That was-- You said it.
SITHER: I felt I did, yes. I definitely felt like I made-- Especially
relative to a lot of the other volunteers, I definitely made a
contribution.
WILSON: But if you say you also feel you lived the cliche, what was that
01:29:00impact on you do you think?
SITHER: Oh, like I said before you know, they have this whole movement
called voluntary simplicity, you know where you're-- Well I mean I
was always a voluntary simplicist or whatever you want to call it, but
being in Cameroon you know just appreciating things other than that
which can be found in material pleasures or what like that. You know
and I think that's another thing that's pretty common in Peace Corps
experiences is that you're with people who are pretty low on the totem
pole but yet their happiness and content level even surpasses that we
can find in this country. But these are people that have nothing and
probably won't ever have anything, but yet they're enjoying life and
01:30:00smiling and laughing and carrying on like it's all hunky dory so.
WILSON: Are you still in contact with people from your Peace Corps
experience, either Cameroonians or others?
SITHER: Yes, in fact a friend of mine--Peace Corps volunteer who served
in my province who is in medical school now--she actually went back
to my post to do kind of an ethnographic study of attitudes towards
medicine and sickness because she is in medical school and it was part
of program or whatever. So she actually went back and I, before she
left, I gave her a map and a list of people to look up, and I gave her
some letters and some gifts to some people. And she tracked them all
down and found them and they were all excited and stuff. Of course
a lot of these were people that I had already been corresponding with
anyway, but she did find some people that I had kind of lost contact
01:31:00with, which was kind of cool. I was keenly interested in seeing how
some of my projects turned out, and she kind of looked over those and
just a lot of them are still going which is good. A lot of that is due
to the fact that I had a, like I said, I had a successor. And as it
turns out, the person--my predecessor--brought his fiance to my post
or his post too, and he got married there. And my successor brought
her fiance there too and got married in the exact same place; it was
at this farm that they call Reba. Reba's some village in the Bible or
something like that; it's a common name thing. It was kind of a newer
area so they picked a biblical name to give it because it was just bush
before. But our most successful demonstration farm was there and it's
very-- It's perched on top of a hill, it's got a very commanding view,
01:32:00and it's very inspirational and a lot of good workers there. So both
he and her got married there, so it's kind of--
WILSON: Okay, what was the-- Was there any impact on your family from
your Peace Corps experience?
SITHER: Yeah, my dad-- Apparently and my mom, of course he wasn't going
to tell me this because my dad's the strong silent type, but apparently
my dad couldn't sleep for days after I left for Peace Corps. You know
he's always been the grizzled veteran who, you know, the tough guy and
what not, but apparently it worried him quite a bit that I was in this
country where you know I was out of his control or something like that.
And of course my mom, she's a chronic worrier too, so she worried a
lot. But they--my parents definitely are proud of me for my service
01:33:00and of course my brother apparently hasn't told me that but he's
confided to my parents that he is kind of envious that he-- Of course
he's a Marine and that's kind of a polar opposite of being a Peace
Corps volunteer. But he kind of privately wishes that he kind of did
the Peace Corps route instead of the Marine Corps route, although it's
been good to him though so far.
WILSON: What-- Would you say the Peace Corps had any impact on your
career?
SITHER: That's yet to say, I mean because I really haven't-- Like I
said, what I'm doing right now isn't really related to my Peace Corps
service, other than the fact it's beer and I drank a lot of beer in
Cameroon.
WILSON: That association is it. Have you had any other international
01:34:00experience--?
WILSON: Tape two of interview with Robin Sither on December 2, 2004
for the Peace Corps Oral History Project. I think I dropped the
last question Robin, and that had to do with whether you have had any
international experience since you returned to the States either in
terms of travel or local organizations or anything else.
SITHER: The only traveling I've done out of the country since I have
returned to Peace Corps has been to Mexico. And I went to the state
of-- And this is with my job. The company I work for Alltech has
built a facility in rural Puebla state kind of between, well near the--
01:35:00Puebla is where the make the Volkswagens; they have a huge Volkswagen
plant there. But I guess that's the only claim to fame of that area
but-- And they built this plant. It's pretty interesting; it's what
they called solid state fermentation plant. What they're doing is
they're growing various organisms, what they are they're fungus--
various types of mold on a solid substrate such as wheat bran, and
these organisms have been selected for their ability to produce certain
enzymes that are used in fuel ethanol or beverage alcohol or various
feed--animal feed applications and stuff like that. So they have a
facility where they are growing this stuff, and so I went down there to
01:36:00kind of shadow some people down there and learn that process. And that
was interesting because I stayed down there for about three weeks and
they situated the plant in this local community in the shadow I guess
it's Pico de Orizaba, I think that's the highest point in Mexico. So
it's a beautiful setting, very agricultural with a, you know, fields
on this-- It's still in the plateau in central or the Central Corriere
or whatever it is. So it's very high in elevation and you have the
agriculture, you have this beautiful volcano, and all this quaint
little town and stuff, so it's very nice staying there and going to
the markets and talking to people. I also went down to Oaxaca, which
is really neat and I recommend anybody who goes to Mexico visit Oaxaca
because it is a very interesting place. They have some really cool
Zapatec ruins there and the markets there and the town itself are really
nice. And I also went to Yelapa; so that's been my only international
01:37:00experiences leaving Peace Corps. But I definitely aspire to go some
other places. Asia is at the top of my list. I definitely want to go
to-- I think I really want to see Korea and China, maybe Japan so.
WILSON: Would you say that Peace Corps had any kind of impact on the way
you look at the world and what goes on in it today?
SITHER: Yeah, yeah. To be honest with you, unfortunately I am a
little-- I think I am not as optimistic as I-- I think I've always
been a glass half empty guy, but I kind of held it out there you
know-- Because I don't think I ever was a very big American patriot.
01:38:00I mean I definitely appreciate my country and I know the value of
the good things in this country, but I was-- And I kind of expected
my experience overseas to corroborate my sort of bad attitude about
this country and it didn't. It actually made me appreciate my country
more and that was not what I expected. But yeah, I'm definitely not
as optimistic. It's kind of scary to go overseas and see where the
axe meets the grindstone as far as issues of pertaining to ecological
destruction, HIV/AIDS, the impact of globalization especially when it
comes to trade barriers as it comes to agriculture, the fact that these
01:39:00developing countries have very little value added manufacturing; they
are basically relying on commodities. And witnessing the quote unquote
oil curse and the fact that there's no developing nation that has
oil that has managed to use those resources wisely to actually better
that country--there's not a single one. And Cameroon is among those.
If anything it has been a curse, it's just entrenched corruption
and what not. In fact, you know companies there's what Shell Oil
executives have admitted to bribing officials you know since you know
the beginnings of the overseas oil industry and stuff like that. But
I think it's yeah, it's definitely made me a lot more cynical because
the patterns are just continuing unabated and there's really no end
in sight and it's kind of sad that we're locked into the system that
01:40:00really we're going to continue on until we reach a crisis.
WILSON: What do you think the overall impact of Peace Corps over the
years has been?
SITHER: That's not something that I could tell you. I mean that would
have-- Some scholar would have to. And I think it actually has--
In fact in the case of Cameroon, I think there was a Cameroonian who
actually wrote a book about the impact of Peace Corps on Cameroon. I
think I'm going to have to track that down and read it. But as far
as in a larger respect I really don't know. I mean I've read some
books about Peace Corps through the years and some you know volunteer
experiences from the sixties through the seventies and eighties and
what not and how it relates to a larger context. But that's really
01:41:00not for me to say. I can say that for our own part in my part of
Cameroon where I was posted, one of the great successes of Peace Corps
was introducing the cultivation of vegetables such as carrots, cabbage,
market types vegetables that they would sell to market or they would
market to people of means that preferred to consume those things. And
also they'd kind of in turn, as they've grown these crops; they've
grown to enjoy them themselves. They've kind of varied their diet too,
so that's been a really good success. And in a larger-- Aside from
Peace Corps, a lot of the-- There have been a lot of trades that have
been introduced into Cameroon, not necessarily by Peace Corps but other
development entities. I believe the Dutch were active in Cameroon in
I think the sixties and seventies and they introduced various types
01:42:00of things like you know I think construction methods and tailoring and
that kind of thing. So I think in a larger perspective you know when
you think about development organizations, Peace Corps definitely has
its place in there.
WILSON: What do you think the role of Peace Corps should be today or in
the future?
SITHER: Peace Corps the concept and Peace Corps the execution are quite
different things, and I think that Peace Corps as I experienced it
could use a lot of improvement. It, I mean you know they say you have
01:43:00three goals as a Peace Corps volunteer. You're supposed to impart
the knowledge that you're supposed to teach, in my case it was agro
forestry. And another goal is to learn about the culture of your
host country. And then I guess the third is to bring that knowledge
back home and impart that knowledge to Americans. But it's implied
that all three of those goals have equal weight and to me that's not,
that's just-- it's not serious. You know Peace Corps is not a serious
development entity--international development entity. I think it has a
lot to do with the fact that they have these nebulous three goals that
they want you to accomplish and then there's very little oversight.
01:44:00And it's-- And there's very little institutional continuity or memory
on the part of the Peace Corps and I saw this, witnessed this first
hand in Cameroon. I mean you have situations where things have been
tried and then abandoned and then three country directors later they
come back and try that again without revisiting the fact that it failed
the first time. So I mean and that's just you know that's just the tip
of the iceberg. I mean there's a lot of things about Peace Corps that
if I was in charge I would definitely change. And first and foremost
is to make it more serious because there's very little oversight of the
volunteer's activities. I mean you could go to-- And in my case, if
I didn't want to do a damn thing and just party and drink and travel
the whole time--and there were volunteers that did this--they didn't
do a damn thing, I could get away with it. And I mean that's not
01:45:00acceptable. That's not good P.R. on the part of Americans, it's not--
You know it's not a good use of resources if you want to make an impact
in terms of development and make friends around the world; I don't
think that's good. So I don't know.
WILSON: Should the Peace Corps continue?
SITHER: Yes, but in a reformed manner. I think it needs to be
overhauled, I do.
WILSON: Okay, well that's all the formal questions I have, but I guess
I would ask you if there are some things that I have missed that you
would like to talk about or any other story or experience you would
like to share.
SITHER: Well I should have brought my pictures. I can bring them out
01:46:00and just look at them and I can--that's how I'd remember stories is
visual or if I had something I just-- I'm having trouble conjuring up
stuff but I will say I don't have any regrets about Peace Corps. I
would definitely do it again; I don't think I would have served three
years. I think that would be one regret; I would definitely-- I mean I
did maximize my first two years but I feel very fortunate to have gone
to the country of Cameroon. Like I said, the fact that it was-- The
diversity was just incredible--the cultural diversity, the culture, the
diversity in climate and ecology was incredible, and the scenic beauty,
and relatively pristine traditional cultures that you could experience
without feeling that you're like this tourist or whatever you know going
01:47:00to, you know, visit the Masaai on a safari or something like that you
know. Which I kind of got an inkling of when I traveled to southern
Africa, I kind of got that canned type of tourist experience but it
was good to experience something very raw because I mean-- Actually
I mean I found myself in situations where you know that seemed pretty
remarkable but to me it, as it was then, it was pretty unremarkable.
I mean there was one time I was meeting up with some volunteers and we
were going to climb the local volcano in my area of Mount Oku, which is
a forest preserve--a mountain forest preserve. And as it happened, the
day before we were to go to Oku village to climb the mountain, a local-
- Well it wasn't a local militia because there was no local militia,
01:48:00but a group of locals had taken over the local gendarmerie. You know
in Cameroon as a legacy of the French system, not only do they have
police and army, but they also have gendarmes, which are kind of, their
role as related to the other two, I'm not completely sure about, but
basically they go around harassing people and setting up road blocks.
But they had raided and burned the gendarmerie and stole all the
weapons, and they weren't around. And presumably they were up in the
woods that we were going to walk into, but I mean we-- I can remember
we walked up into those woods; we didn't care because we knew if we met
them we would just, you know-- We knew we weren't in any danger because
you know they were just the same, because I mean this is just over the
hill from my post and I know these people basically. You know I know
how to deal with them and I felt comfortable, but you know if you--
I can see that if I'd gone there as a tourist or just some visitor I
might have been wigged out and gone, "Oh my god, this is insane."
01:49:00
WILSON: Would you ever go back to Cameroon?
SITHER: Yeah, I'd like to. Not in any hurry now, I mean it's kind of
expensive to go there. Their currency is pegged to the Euro and your
purchasing power is pretty low, and tickets to get there are pretty
expensive. I'm not in any hurry to get there. There's a lot of other
places in the world I want to go to, but I definitely want to go back
and visit all the people that I knew. I'm just hoping that they're
still going to be around because most of the people I knew were either
older or like middle aged and you know, of course the younger people
you know the whole specter of AIDS is just really scary. In fact,
the last-- One of the last people I saw before I left Cameroon was
a friend of mine named Shiyntum Richard , Cameroonian, who used to
01:50:00teach-- He used to be a motorcycle trainer for Peace Corps, a great
guy, very worldly. His father was well educated, he was educated in
Britain and he actually grew up for a spell in Germany and France. He
could speak German fluently; he could speak French fluently, of course
English too. Very great guy and just great to spend time with him,
and he was very western in his outlook but also very Cameroonian, so
it was a good balance. So he was just a great person to be around, and
he was also very strong physically. He was-- He kind of manufactured
this weight system from fly wheels of Mercedes trucks and he had this
bench that he manufactured, so I mean this guy was really buff. I mean
this guy-- And he could-- He was so strong he could do a pull up and
then right himself this way and push himself up, which is something
I've never seen anybody else do--maybe some small gymnast, but this
01:51:00is a big guy. So very physically imposing guy, very charismatic, and
of course people like that tend to draw women to them and he enjoyed
his pleasures in that respect to a fault, and it caught up with him.
And he was actually at my post when he started developing symptoms.
The first symptom was he started developing lymphoedema in one leg.
And lymphoedema is when your lymph starts swelling; so his whole leg
started swelling. And he kept on going to the doctors and they had no
clue what it was, but one thing they did ask him to do, "Well you know,
you probably need to take an HIV test." And he said, "No, I don't want
to." And he kept on going to more doctors, and they couldn't figure out
what it was. They said, "Yeah, but you need to take an HIV test." He
said, "No, I don't want to." So I actually never suspected HIV until
01:52:00he visited the other hospital in Kumbo, and I happened to know some
of the nurses there because I worked with them on their farms with
agro forestry and I knew them really well. And they are the ones that
confided me because they-- That he basically, although like I said he
wouldn't let them test him, but it was obvious that it was HIV. And he
was fortunate enough that his mother, he had a sister in France who was
pretty well off and his mother was still receiving a pension from the
government, so he had the means. So they took him to the capitol with
the ultimate aim of getting him to France for treatment, but by then he
was so ill there was no way any airline could take him on flight, much
less if he could make it. And he was actually the last person that I
personally was friends with. Other people took me to the airport, but
he was actually the last person that I actually saw. And to see him
01:53:00go from being this, you know he was probably about 220 pounds--probably
about 6 foot, 220 lbs--very big robust guy, strong, and seeing him on
the ropes where the fat had drained out of his face, he was completely
emaciated, he couldn't walk. And to see him in that state, it was not
a good way to end my Peace Corps experience seeing him like that. It
was-- And to double the hurt was the fact that I was visiting somebody
else a few doors down who also was childhood friends--childhood friends
of this guy--and he refused to see him because he just didn't want to
see him in that state. So that was kind of a-- That was definitely not
the way I wanted to end my experience but it was and kind of sad. But
luckily I have-- There was one guy I knew who was older, he actually
01:54:00passed away last year and I was really close to him, so I was really
sad.
WILSON: Also HIV?
SITHER: Not HIV but he was just-- But yeah, I mean I just hope that--
Because there was a volunteer who served in the seventies in a post
near mine, most of the people he knew were dead. And there's only one
family that he was able to visit when he was there.
WILSON: Okay, anything else?
SITHER: Not that I can think of.
WILSON: Well, thank you very much for the interview, Robin.
SITHER: Sure.
[End of interview.]