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The Toughest Peace Corps Job: Letters from Somalia, 1969
Jim Douglas thinks he is ready to be an agriculture/rural development volunteer in the Somali bush – what the Peace Corps/Somalia director calls “the toughest Peace Corps job ever to be done.”
But confidence and good intentions prove little match for the physical hardships, trying to communicate in a dialect learned from scratch, and living as a stranger in a radically foreign culture – where people watch him in his hut for hours and a child smiles and says, “Gaal (foreign infidel). F*#! your father.”
A transfer to Mogadishu to work in sports and recreation brings different challenges, including a presidential assassination and pro-Soviet military coup that changes life for everyone in Somalia.
From trying to plow with a camel and walking across the bush in flip flops to introducing dodgeball in a kids’ prison, standing trial for throwing a party with Somali guests, and playing basketball in the presence of military leaders against a team named for the revolution, these letters and journal entries describe the author’s experiences in detail – sometimes in the coarse language of a 22-year old, who starts out with a generous spirit but is being pushed to his limit. They invite readers to put themselves in his shoes and wonder how they would react under similar circumstances. And to ask are good intentions ever enough?
But confidence and good intentions prove little match for the physical hardships, trying to communicate in a dialect learned from scratch, and living as a stranger in a radically foreign culture – where people watch him in his hut for hours and a child smiles and says, “Gaal (foreign infidel). F*#! your father.”
A transfer to Mogadishu to work in sports and recreation brings different challenges, including a presidential assassination and pro-Soviet military coup that changes life for everyone in Somalia.
From trying to plow with a camel and walking across the bush in flip flops to introducing dodgeball in a kids’ prison, standing trial for throwing a party with Somali guests, and playing basketball in the presence of military leaders against a team named for the revolution, these letters and journal entries describe the author’s experiences in detail – sometimes in the coarse language of a 22-year old, who starts out with a generous spirit but is being pushed to his limit. They invite readers to put themselves in his shoes and wonder how they would react under similar circumstances. And to ask are good intentions ever enough?
- GenresAfrica
339 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 5, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 9, 2017
The Peace Corps slogan was, "The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love."
It would have been difficult to love the job Jim Douglas got, in rural Somalia, amid the turmoil of a collapsing government and society, trying to communicate in a dialect he had to learn from scratch, adjusting to a radically different culture.
It's told in the smart and smart-alecky, sometimes profane and exasperated, language of a bright, well-intentioned 22-year-old who is pushed to his limit.
It would have been difficult to love the job Jim Douglas got, in rural Somalia, amid the turmoil of a collapsing government and society, trying to communicate in a dialect he had to learn from scratch, adjusting to a radically different culture.
It's told in the smart and smart-alecky, sometimes profane and exasperated, language of a bright, well-intentioned 22-year-old who is pushed to his limit.
March 13, 2016
Jim Douglas used some of the letters he wrote and journals he kept to describe life in Somalia in 1969. Douglas was a young Peace Corps Volunteer initially sent to Africa to teach new agricultural techniques. The Peace Corps sent a group into the bush amongst Somalis who speak one of the hardest languages to learn on Earth, in an area which is materially very poor and in the middle of a culture which was borderline xenophobic.
Douglas's experiences as he progressed from optimism to frustration to apathy are interesting and the editing of his writings was well done. Somalia would have been a hard place for a foreigner to make a difference during the best of times... 1969 would turn out NOT to be the best of times. Illustrated with some photos.
Douglas's experiences as he progressed from optimism to frustration to apathy are interesting and the editing of his writings was well done. Somalia would have been a hard place for a foreigner to make a difference during the best of times... 1969 would turn out NOT to be the best of times. Illustrated with some photos.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews