The Adventures Overseas

Larry W. Harms

What does one find in a rainforest or in an airplane over it?

One starts Peace Corps by studying a map.

In May 1963, at the end of my senior year of college, the Peace Corps sent a letter indicating that I was accepted, pending final clearances, as a Volunteer for assignment to Guinea, Africa.

Early June was wheat-harvest time in western Oklahoma. So, first things first—I had to help family and other farmers until there was clearance.

One event confirmed that the Peace Corps was working on it.

I was working for a neighbor, tilling fields immediately following the harvest. I took a mid-afternoon break for sandwiches and ice tea, and the owner and a neighbor stopped by to talk. They had been over at a rebuilt bridge, checking it out. The person checking me out found them there. They told me about the guy, how he was dressed, where he might be from, and what kind of car he was driving, then jokingly said, “We didn’t tell him anything.” They also said he would always remember the interview. Standing on the bridge, he had leaned against one of the railings. The black wood treatment was not completely dry; he left with some on both his clothes and hands.

Guinea was the first independent French colony in Africa, and it set the stage for all others. President Sekou Toure was the key person in gaining its independence. His reputation with Africans was (and still is) that of a hero. With France, his situation was very difficult: France had both commercial and political interests that it wanted to continue after independence. President Toure turned to Russia for assistance. That was against the interests of France.

Politics aside, the economic, social, educational, and other developmental progress expected by the people could not be realized. President Toure had a very good reputation within Guinea when we arrived, but a lot was rapidly lost during our two years there. Toure was known for strong opinions, and he was instrumental in putting in the Peace Corps, ousting it after about four years, and then inviting back in after an additional number of years.

We were Guinea I, 1963-65, the first group of Volunteers. I was assigned to Macenta, a town in the southeastern rainforest. The primary elements of my Peace Corps Volunteer experience, from the technical standpoint, were to introduce an improved chicken breed and meet the nutritional and other needs for higher levels of production, to teach students using direct field training to improve vegetable and poultry production, and improve production of high-quality vegetables for the town market. The details seem a little lost at this point (forty year later). We certainly didn’t create the revolution that we had envisioned!

It is the people, the experiences, and the adventures that stay with me.

At the operational and social level in Macenta, there was a small, diverse, international group of interesting people. There was a team of Chinese who were introducing cultivation, harvesting and processing of tea, some Russians working in forestry and the educational system, several Lebanese merchants, a U.S. missionary couple, and some French of various professions. The working-class Guineans didn’t initially make distinctions as to who we all were.

We were leaving the Regional Agricultural Office one day and a young Guinean rushed out of the building to catch us, indicating that we had some mail. He gave it to us, and it was all in Chinese. We must have looked a little confused, and he said with some confusion, “You are Chinese, aren’t you?”

Islam and Christianity were both present, especially in the cities and towns. The traditional practices and beliefs were strong, especially in rural villages. Talk about it always brought up witchcraft. Some of the PCVs, including me, were prone toward ridiculing it. One day, I fell into that with the American missionary, and he interrupted me. He said that I should always respect it. I asked what that meant. Did he have any details about it being real? He simply stated again what he had said. Always respect it.

In Macenta, the rainy season was ten months long with several rains even in the two-month dry season. The height of the rainy season was constant showers throughout the day and night.

The rainforest is a paradise of nature. I lived several kilometers outside of Macenta on an old French farm/research station in the rainforest. We lived with nature. Mosquitoes, lizards, and sometimes army ants were a given. Seeing the army ants was impressive. Their march was not an hour or even a half-day affair. It went on for several days. In difficult spots, some of the ants would hold their bodies together to form a bridge that the others could walk over.

Shortly after my arrival in Macenta, a hunter showed up at the door. He wanted to sell me a python skin. It was fresh and bloody. Did I need a python skin? Maybe I’ll never see another one. Maybe, the hunter is right—they are hardly ever to be found. So, I bought it. I cured it over time by salting and washing. It stank. Finally I rolled it up and put it in a box. I unpacked it a few years ago. It looks good, but what do I do with it?

Once, a fellow PCV excused himself from the evening conversation, indicating that he was headed for a shower and bed. A few moments later he came back in, saying there was a snake in the shower. I would have thought it a practical joke, except his voice was quivering. His face was absolutely white. Yes, there was a snake in the shower.

The drain from the shower was a pipe through the floor and then through the foundation wall. Water then spilled onto the ground and the hillside. We must have taken covers off both the shower drain and the outside drainpipe. The snake had come in through the pipe. Many of the snakes are poisonous, so we normally minimized our risks. Rather than getting it back to nature, we did it in.

A Peace Corps Volunteer (a teacher) in Macenta decided to get a monkey as a pet. It wasn’t that nice a pet, but he liked the monkey. He kept it outside in a hut off the ground in which it could spend the night. It was also on a long cord so that it could move about. At one point the monkey and a dog got into a fight. The monkey had some wounds. The Volunteer cared for his pet as a dedicated owner does. But the monkey’s health deteriorated. After several weeks, the monkey was in bad shape. We took a blood sample and sent it off for testing. The monkey had rabies from the fight with the dog. We, especially the other Volunteer, were fearful about our exposure to the rabies. All went O.K. for us. But the monkey was put to sleep.

There were also chimpanzees in Guinea. A PCV teacher decided that her pet should be a chimp. One day another Volunteer and I were traveling through her town and saw the little beast. Being with that thing for an hour or so was eerie. It was not in a cage or on a leash; it lived in the house. It seemed clear to me that, for the chimp, we were all one family. For me, it was an uneasy feeling. The Peace Corps staff learned of her pet and immediately insisted that for health reasons, she find a new home for the chimp.

A few weeks after a staff visit and collection of samples for medical tests, I got a telegraph message that I was to come to Conakry. A preliminary test for a water-borne disease was positive. I protested a bit. They were insistent. I was to come by plane.

I made arrangements. On departure day, a rainstorm was in the making. At the airport, the pilot ordered us immediately on the plane so he could take off before the storm hit. We got to the end of the runway, but a wind gust blew the plane sideways. He straightened it out; another gust hit and again blew us sideways. He taxied back, and we sat in the plane, hot and humid, until we could finally take off. It was still stormy. He stayed below the clouds, which meant that he also had to do some maneuvering to get through the mountains.

We had flown for a while, and then we turned left for a few minutes, then right, and then left again. A man in traditional dress looked out the window and then started seriously studying things. Talking out loud to himself, he said in frustration and disbelief, “We’re in Mali, we’re in Mali!” A co-pilot came walking through the plane and got a map. Soon after that, we turned a hard right and flew until we hit the Niger River. We were in Mali. We then flew up the river to Kankan. The medical tests were negative.

Larry W. Harms is a retired Foreign Service Officer, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with extensive experience in Africa and Haiti. He served in the Peace Corps in Guinea from 1963-65, where he and other PCVs introduced an improved poultry breed, upgraded poultry feed for increased production, reinvigorated a large government-run vegetable garden, and carried out field training of students in the regional secondary school.