Group XXII description

Nigeria Group XXII
FON.org
Group description:	Teachers
Service years:	1966 - 1968
Number of volunteers :	75
Trained at :	Boston University
We were stationed in the North

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Our group was great.

Training

Group 22 trained at Boston University beginning the third week in June, 1966, ending mid-August. A smaller group going to Cameroon trained with us. We were all headed into teaching at Craft Schools, Teacher Training Colleges or Secondary Schools.

The Director of Training was Bill Southworth (see message reference), and the staff included:

The political scientist A A Castagno of BU, (see reference link) who provided an academic view of Africa and a broad political context for our service. He astonished some by predicting that the Soviet Union would have trouble one day with rebellious muslim minorities.

The Hausa expert John N Paden, who did his doctoral research in Kano, gave lectures on Hausa culture, including the very useful advice that, to learn proper pronunciation, we should listen to the Hausa kids, since they speak more slowly and clearly. Link for more about John.

Sam Adams, an RPCV who had served in the Western Region.

Language instructors Ralph Fotheringham, Monty and Fran Bessmer, and others

Hausa "informants" Haroun al Rashid Adamu, Zakari Kano, Felix Obinani, Benji Ishyaku, Yinusa Paiko and others

Photo 009 goes here: File:Example.jpg

Warren Kantrowitz, MD coordinated the medical stuff: shots, VD lectures, etc. more about Dr. Kantrowitz

In the five years of Peace Corps existence, training seemed to have evolved from an early emphasis on survival skills (what the military nowadays might call "training the snake eaters"), to what was basically an academic program with some field experience in the Boston schools and a week doing community action in the then black ghetto of Roxbury.

A great strength of our training was the Hausa language/culture program. The instructors and informants used the book (then in manuscript form) by Charles and Marguerite Kraft, Introductory Hausa. (Material link) Language classes ran 4 or 6 hours per day, depending on other demands, and included a lot of time in BU's language lab. Most of us were amazed to find we could actually bargain in Hausa with the traders who showed up at the ambassador's residence in Lagos our first night in country.

We were further broken down by subjects we would be teaching - English, Mathematics, History, French, etc. These groups met often and were typically led by a member of the BU Education faculty who aimed to make teachers out of liberal arts majors, in a hurry. There were mini-lessons, videotaped and publicly analyzed (a tech marvel for many of us at the time). The teacher training was capped by several weeks of student teaching in a Boston high school – where the summer population was a mix of students who had to repeat a class and those who wanted to get ahead.

Boston was hot and muggy that summer. Photo 008 goes here File:Example.jpg There wasn't a lot of time for diversions, but we were bused to Cape Cod for the Fourth of July, and a few folks took in ballgames at nearby Fenway Park. Training often lasted until 9 or 10 pm, and a place across Commonwealth Ave. called The Dugout provided what little after-hours activity could be had. The Dugout is still there: The Dugout It was not a bad way to train for Star Beer, in fact.

(For more training photos go to http://idisk.mac.com/jlosse-Public )

We were frequently hauled out to various medical facilities for shots, but anyone who claims to have forgotten Gamma Globulin Night on Bay State Road needs to visit a member of the helping professions who deals with repressed memories:

Gamma globulin was to prevent hepatitis, or at least make it more victim-friendly. The dose was 1 cc for each 20 lbs of body weight, so for most of us this meant 3-4 cc's per cheek, administered in a one-two punch by a tandem of nurses, one on each side of the cot. To get to the climactic cot moment, we waited in a line stretching out the door and down the sidewalk. The newly inoculated came out by the same door. Seeing them and hearing their accounts acted as a stimulus to the imagination. Mass hysteria also played a part. The needles got bigger. The gamma globulin became like molasses, based on their testimony and the vigorous rubbing they needed to do to make the stuff disperse, all those many cc's, to the rest of the body.

We had been administered a battery of psychological tests in the first week, which provided the staff a number of opportunities. In addition to a private meeting or two, there were ongoing weekly group sessions with a shrink. One, Dr. Globus, had an interesting approach. Sitting in the corner of a room too small to provide comfortable seating for the 8 or 10 of us, he said absolutely nothing, week after week. He looked around a bit, but mostly he held a lit cigar whose ash grew and grew. No ashtray. Just his legal pad, which he never used for writing. This behavior provoked humor, sarcasm, frustration and anxiety, no doubt all part of the Grand Plan. Our group did suffer a high rate of "deselections", but we never knew if it was the input of Dr. Globus, too much Star Beer training at The Dugout, or that dang falling tone in Hausa that was responsible.

For one week we left the dorms on Bay State Road to go to Roxbury for community work. The jobs varied – most of us were attached to social service agencies and lived either in churches, the YWCA, or with local families. It was an eye-opening experience, though did not exactly track with what most of us would find in Northern Nigeria.

Training ended in August and we were given a few days to go home and settle our affairs, reassembling in New York City. The Peace Corps put us up in Manhattan for a night and then next day, put us on a plane. The plane was an Overseas 707 chartered from World Airways, and we were the only ones on board. At the time World Airways World Airways did mostly military charters connected with the Viet Nam war, and the cabin crew seemed to enjoy the change. There was a lot of singing and, after a shortened period of darkness, we were over Africa and coming in to Lagos.

Service

We served.

Service Started

Group 22 arrived in Lagos in late August, 1966. Then as now, the airport scene was chaotic, but we were shepherded by embassy people through customs and onto a bus of some kind into the city, ending up in dorms at the University of Lagos. On the way in we were wide-eyed at the streams of people going both ways along the road, carrying and pushing or pulling their loads. The University of Lagos was a complete contrast - large modern buildings. For breakfast they served US style boxed cereals!

At night there was a welcome and reception at Ambassador John McConnell's residence attended by embassy staff - educated Nigerians in colorful dress. Out of nowhere appeared traders who spread their goods out on the lawn - many of whom spoke Hausa and provided us with evidence that we'd been well taught at BU - sometimes it seemed they had learned their Hausa right out of the Krafts' book!

Various people were invited to go into the heart of Lagos' modern night life district after the ambassador's reception. It seemed like Times Square only noisier. It was overwhelming. Some proved better than others at morphing The Twist into West African High Life. The embassy folks who accompanied us were extraordinarily good hosts and, looking back, good at protecting us.

Back at the university dorms, sleep finally came amidst a cacophony of strange bird and animal calls.

Next stop was Kaduna, capital of the North. We were flown there on a DC3. We carried a ladder in the aisle with us to exit the plane in Kaduna, where a welcoming delegation waited on the tarmac. After the serious attention paid in training to Hausa standards of dress and modesty, this ladder, once deployed, created challenges for some of the genders represented in Nigeria XXII.

In Kaduna we stayed at the luxurious Hamdala Hotel for a couple of days. They had a swimming pool and an ostrich on the grounds. We were treated royally and introduced to ministers and PC Staff. First Aid kits were issued, and they contained serious stuff! We were given big bottles of Aralen, the malaria medicine we'd take every Sunday for two years and then for a time even after we came home.

It was in Kaduna that we finally found out where we would be stationed. The assignments were probably complicated by the political pressures of the time. Civil disturbances in May and June had resulted in many teachers leaving their posts or not renewing contracts, and every school seemed to have needs. Having become so close during training, most of us didn't realize that we might not see each other again until two years later at the termination conference - it all depended on where we were sent in that vast area.

People left Kaduna at different times - a group of ten or so might be driven to Kano, spend the night in the Peace Corps Hostel there, then be picked up in a jeep by staff or PCV's from their ultimate destination even farther north (Sokoto, Katsina, Maiduguri). Others found their way to Yola, Numan, Bauchi, Abuja, Ilorin, Birnin Kebbi - names we'd never heard of, and not all of them were in Hausa-speaking areas. These trips also served as an introduction to how rules of the road evolve when the number of travel lanes decreases from 2 to 1 to zero.

It was the end of the rainy season, and the north was green and beautiful.

Service Events

What was going on.

Service Ended

Our service ended

See also

Group XXII stories