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ELSEWHERE IN THE PEACE CORPS WORLD: NEW COUNTRIES AND NEW CHALLENGES
Peace Corps growth took a dramatic
upward spiral after the organization's
fifth birthday on March 1, 1966. In its
sixth year of operations, the Peace Corps
announced or implemented new programs
for 13 nations and territories, including
Micronesia and Polynesia reported on else-
where in this edition. Welcomed to the
Peace Corps family of nations were:
AFRICA
CHAD - Once part of old French
Equatorial Africa, this new nation, carved
largely out of desert, welcomed the Peace
Corps in September when 33 Volunteers
arrived to serve as English teachers and
work in land reclamation in the swampy
Lake Chad region and in a medical train-
ing program.
The health program - aimed at retrain-
ing Chadian hospital personnel and ex-
panding a school health project - will
probably require additional Volunteers
late in 1967; it is presently contemplated
that Volunteer candidates for this program
will begin training in the fall. To man
the program, the Peace Corps seeks reg-
istered nurses, sanitarians and liberal arts
graduates, the latter to serve as public
health educators.
LESOTHO - Formerly the British col-
ony of Basutoland, Lesotho achieved its in-
dependence last October. Now it faces one
of the most difficult development struggles
on the African continent.
Completely surrounded by the Republic
of South Africa (to which one-sixth of its
900,000 population have migrated to work
as farm laborers and miners), the tiny
mountainous nation has requested Peace
Corps help in expanding its educational
system and improving basic health serv-
ices and agricultural production.
Of the 88 Volunteers requested, 50 will
teach in secondary schools and teacher-
training colleges. Others will work in rural
development and public works such as
clinics, village water supplies and anti-
erosion dams.
A health group will staff baby clinics,
work with mothers to improve their nu-
tritional and domestic skills and help dis-
tribute food supplies. A few Volunteers
with agricultural backgrounds will work
with credit and marketing cooperatives.
The Volunteer skills required include
mostly liberal arts graduates for the teach-
ing, rural development and health pro-
grams; two registered nurses and a trained
health educator, and a Volunteer capable
of teaching advanced agricultural science
subjects.
THE GAMBIA - Eighteen Volunteers,
scheduled to arrive in October, will work
in projects ranging from teaching in voca-
tional training schools and agricultural
centers to establishing cattle marketing
cooperatives.
To meet the request, the Peace Corps
needs Volunteers with at least summer
experience in construction, repair of heavy
diesel and farm equipment, carpentry and
furniture-making.
Other special skills required include a
veterinary laboratory technician to train
apprentice Gambian veterinarians, a Vol-
unteer to set up an electrical repair shop
and to train electrical repairmen, and a
Volunteer to supervise a rinderpest inocu-
lation campaign. Training begins this sum-
mer.
MAURITANIA -With 13 Volunteers,
Mauritania now has the smallest - and
one of the newest - Peace Corps country
program anywhere. But expansion is seen
likely later this year.
The new project, as currently planned,
will concentrate on health problems and
complement the Volunteers now working
in the rural public works programs scat-
tered through the Saharan, Arabic-speak-
ing former French territory.
The Volunteer health workers will staff
maternal and baby clinics, and work gen-
erally in child welfare. Present plans are
for training to start in late summer or early
fall. Manpower requirements: Volunteers
with liberal arts backgrounds or some
knowledge of health matters.
UPPER VOLTA - The landlocked
West African nation gets its first contingent
of Volunteers later this year with the ar-
rival of 51 Volunteers trained to help ex-
pand established rural development and
health programs in the former French
territory.
The Volunteers will be mainly liberal
arts graduates, with some trained health
personnel included. They will concentrate
on three basic programs: well construction
and agricultural extension; general rural
development, and a public health education
campaign that will improve diagnostic
services and extend general hygiene and
infant and maternal care services to vil-
lages near rural health centers.
LIBYA - With its oil exports increas-
ing rapidly, Libya faces problems of mod-
ernizing a highly traditional society that
must cope with material wealth derived
from oil which has appeared in a few
short years. The first group of 18 Volun-
teer teachers is providing English instruc-
tion in high schools throughout the nation.
BOTSWANA - Faced with urgent
manpower needs in all areas of national
development, this new Republic last year
requested Peace Corps Volunteers to as-
sist with educational and community de-
velopment programs. Three months after
Botswana had exchanged its colonial iden-
tity of Bechuanaland for the new role of
independent nation -September 30, 1966
- 57 Volunteers were at work in the
sparsely settled country.
Volunteers are presently teaching in
secondary schools and teacher training in-
stitutions, providing technical supervision
for a major self-help public works program
and helping to improve the management
and production of cooperatives.
PEACE
CORPS IS GOING TO P01
Liberal Arts Graduates Will Be Nucleus of New Western S
The Peace Corps has been
send Volunteers to Polynesia's
invited to
first inde-
pendent nation - Western Samoa.
Having demonstrated in Micronesia in
the space of only a few months what Vol-
unteer catalysts can do in a Pacific Island
setting, the Peace Corps will place a new
contingent in training for the Samoan
assignment beginning this summer, with
the likelihood that by that time Volun-
teers will also be requested for assignment
in other new South Pacific island areas.
Peace Corps planners believe it is pos-
sible that these projected programs, cou-
pled with the existing Micronesian efforts,
could add as many as 1,000 new Volun-
teers in the Pacific.
For Western Samoa, and other pro-
jected South Seas assignments, the Peace
Corps is seeking mainly liberal arts grad-
uates for tasks in teaching, public health,
agriculture and community development.
* *
THE GOAL is to raise thousands of
islanders from a life of ill health, poor
diet and lack of education in an area of
the world that historically has received
more romantic than realistic attention.
Volunteers in Western Samoa - a nine-
island complex supporting a rapidly-grow-
ing population of 134,000 - will form a
striking force against an array of health
problems and obstacles to educational and
economic development in a country where:
" almost all Samoans suffer from in-
testinal parasites and many others are
afflicted with tuberculosis, yaws, leprosy
and other infectious diseases.
" adequate, safe village water supplies
are a luxury.
" infant mortality is still more common
than not and population growth is out-
stripping what few advances have been
made in improving island life.
Against this dismal background are fur-
ther hindrances to development: lack of
educational facilities and a meager agri-
cultural output.
THE FIRST VOLUNTEERS to reach
Western Samoa this fall will set in motion a
- PIX
AFRICA: Lesotho's chill mile-high uplands make gaily colored bankets necessary.
- BLACK STAR
- PIX
The Volunteers will take part in a na-
tional effort to expand irrigation projects
and bring more land under cultivation.
They will aid Ceylonese farmers in im-
proving cropping methods, using better
see& and proper fertilization, and better
feeding and management of livestock.
Women Volunteers will help village
women to improve their nutrition and
health practices, particularly for children.
Others will work in school-lunch and
garden projects.
SOUTH KOREA -Peace Corps Vol-
unteers - 93 of them - entered South
Korea for the first time last fall and began
teaching at high schools and technical,
agricultural and fisheries schools through-
out the nation. This group will be in-
creased by an additional 236 Volunteers
later this year.
Training programs to begin this sum-
mer will prepare Volunteers - most of
them liberal arts graduates - for assign-
ments in education and a pilot health
project. About 175 will serve as English
teachers in secondary schools; another 61
will establish an experimental health pro-
gram on Cheju Island off the southern
coast.
The latter group will staff local health
sub-centers on the island, train Korean
health personnel, compile health statistics
for use in the long-range planning of
health programs, and encourage residents
to use the center facilities.
The Volunteers also will promote home
sanitation and rodent control programs,
help set up village water supplies and
work generally to sharpen community
awareness of health problems. A similar
program for mainland -areas is expected to
enter the training stage later in the fall.
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ASIA: Students at Seoul in South Korea.
ASIA
CEYLON --- After a three-year ab-
sence, Volunteers this year will resume
work in this populous island nation off the
southern coast of India, assisting Ceylon
to attain self-sufficiency in food production.
Peace Corps training for the program
starts in August and will produce about 80
Volunteers scheduled to arrive abroad in
November. Trainees will be recruited
from among farmers, young persons with
farming experience, liberal arts graduates
and agricultural and home economics
majors.
LATIN AMERICA: Bullock cart plods past presidential palace, Asuncion, Paraguay.
LATIN AMERICA
PARAGUAY - The most recent South
American nation to get Peace Corps help
is a land where three-quarters of the people
make their livelihood by farming and rais-
ing cattle. The first contingent of about
30 Volunteers arrived early this year to
conduct agricultural extension and home
demonstration projects and to develop
further the activities of 4-H type clubs
throughout the country.
GUYANA - Volunteers first entered
the former British Guiana a few months
after it became independent in May 1966.
More than 40 Volunteers work under
the supervision of the Ministry of Works
and Hydraulics in road-building, hydro-
electric, construction, irrigation and other
development projects, and teach in second-
ary and technical training schools.
WASH DAY IN SAMOA near a seaside 'villa' on Upolu's north shore brings out most of the neighborhood. Thatched
roof house lacks walls so occupants work and sleep in full view. Palm frond blinds are dropped only during foul weather.
- NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY PHOTO (C) 1962