Volunqueers Ep 2: Bill Sweigert (Liberia, 1967-1970)

Justin Tabor: Greetings and welcome to episode two of Volunqueers, a storytelling podcast by the LGBTQI+ RPCV community. My name is Justin Tabor, your host, and one of the current co-chairs of the LGBTQI+ RPCV group. I am so excited today to be sharing an episode with you featuring a fellow board member, our secretary Bill Sweigart. Bill served in Liberia. And if episode one was about a modern Peace Corps experience, then episode two is about an OG original Peace Corps experience. Bill served back in the 1960s and just has some amazing stories to share with us about the early days of Peace Corps. As you will find out, Bill is also a really wonderful storyteller, so this is sure to be a treat for everyone. Additionally, just a reminder, this podcast and the views expressed in it are personal. We are gonna get into some critique of Peace Corps and talk about things like colonialism and white saviorism and when we talk about those things, those are personal opinions. I am speaking as Justin Tabor, a civilian. Bill is speaking similarly and so we don’t represent any sort of other organizations in our function on this podcast. With that out of the way, I’m gonna pass it over to Bill to introduce himself. Bill, take it away.

Bill Sweigart: Thank you, Justin. Really happy to be here participating. I was in Liberia in 1967-70, fresh out of college, and made the point in a story that I published recently in an anthology about Liberia that I was inspired by John F. Kennedy when I was in high school, and when Kennedy spoke about the Peace Corps, I immediately said I’m gonna join. So I was about 14 or 15, I guess, when I said that that was gonna happen. And lo and behold, just about the middle of my senior year, I realized it was time to apply and I did and the rest of that is history.

JT: When JFK rolled out the idea, I think most famously at that Michigan State speech that he gave, being a young person at that time, did it immediately click for you, was it just like, oh my gosh that sounds like absolutely amazing and I want to do it, or did it take a while to trickle down to your average human American.

BS: [Laughs] Yeah, I can’t quite remember exactly except that I was inspired immediately. It just rubbed me as something that would be really important for me to do, that it would be a great opportunity. I guess part of it had to do with the fact that I really also wanted to get out of the environment that I lived in. From the time I was about 14 and realized I was gay, that I just started counting the months until I could escape somewhere. So it was part of that whole process of just moving out and going somewhere else, being somewhere else, and another culture to me seemed  to me to be just really a wonderful possible ideal situation maybe.

JT: Where did you — and at this time, maybe you moved around a lot, but where did you mostly grow up at?

BS: In central Pennsylvania, in the [something] valley, right across the river from Harrisburg. And I ended up going to college at one of the 14 state schools in Pennsylvania. Confusingly enough, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Maybe people confused with Indiana and now that I live in Indiana, it’s very confusing. But anyway, that general area and that’s near Pittsburg so mostly I was in the central part of the state and the western part for undergraduate years.

JT: I can relate to that feeling. I grew up in— I’m from Chapel Hill North Carolina which is a college town and then I ended up going to university in that town. So basically I was in Chapel Hill for 21 years straight, so when I started thinking about PEace Corps, I got to study abroad, but I had never really spent an adult part of my life in another place. So other people were looking at New York and these places in the states so I thought why not up the ante a little bit and make that bigger — I wanna see something new; let’s make it really new. Let’s go big on this. So that feeling of like, I am ready to go and see something. I really think that that… So you’re 14, you hear about it, you’re inspired. Now fast forward a couple years, you’re ready to apply. What was applying like back in the late ‘60s?

BS: It’s fairly hard to recreate for people nowadays what it was like in the 1960s with regard to being gay and being in the closet. It just — it was just such a different world. And I never imagined I would be living in the time when the Secretary of Transportation is a gay man with kids, and I mean, just a totally different world so totally. I was aware of the fact that I had to be in the closet. When I went into training… Well even to arrive at the training, which was in Boston, there was this odd moment when I was in the airport men’s room and I looked in the mirror — and I had a mustache. And this again, 1967, and I had seen pictures of gay men in San Francisco and you know, they all seemed to have mustaches and suddenly I thought, God, you know, I better shave off this mustache. And I almost did. I stood there, I could have done it. That was how much we focused on that issue in that era. I went to Boston. It was okay. The mustache didn’t seem to set off any alarms. I took— we had psychological tests that we took that were so intense and one of the questions on one of the tests was just absolutely the question. “Have you ever had any homosexual tendencies in your life?” or something. It was a question we had to punt on, because it was absolutely clear that if we answered that question “yes”, we were not gonna go any further. And so that was the environment in 1967 that we entered.

JT: For those of you listening, you can’t see that Bill still wears a mustache now. Is that a continued act of rebellion or is that just that you like it?

BS: [Laughs] It stayed. It stayed through my Peace Corps service also. And we were talking about the fact— the fact is that it was clear in that era that gay people would probably be screened out. I had a suspicion that even during the training in Boston in 1967 that there were discussions and opportunities for the psych people to be identifying people who were gay.

JT: Wow.

BS: And of course what happened is when I got to Liberia, I realized how many gay people there were in the Peace Corps in that time. And of course we were all in the closet.

JT: Yeah. I get confused about the years of things. 1967 when you’re joining, is Vietnam going on, is there a draft that’s factoring into people’s choice to go into Peace Corps?

BS: Vietnam was going on and that was a factor. And in fact, it was the case that draft boards in places like Texas were actually drafting people out of Peace Corps trainings and sending them off to Vietnam. So it was a very tense situation around all that. But we basically got to our posts and we — I think basically settled in and did the jobs that we set out to do. I was a math and science teacher in middle school — junior high we called it in those days. 7th and 9th grade. I want to say one more thing to you about being gay in the Peace Corps because this was also an important event that happened a year into my service. I had a friend who had gone to Vietnam and he was trying to get out of the army, get out of Vietnam, and he told the service people there, “I’m gay.” This guy happened to be my first boyfriend in college, a guy named Bob. And Bob wrote to me. I was by then a year into my post and Bob wrote to me and said, “Okay, here’s what’s happening. I gotta get out of here. I wanna get out of here and they want names, dates, and places in order to confirm that I’m actually gay before they will let me out of the army.” And I tell you, it was a moment of real trauma because I thought, you know, I didn’t hesitate. I wrote him back immediately and I said, “yes, tell them whatever you have to tell them.” But what happened was that I sat there for the next three or four or five months, imagining that up the road would come the field officer who would come in and say “okay, buster, pack your bags. You’re outta here.” Because some of that information from the military would have reached the State Department. I don’t know. But that again is the climate that we were in. And by the way, I’m proud of the fact that I did that. I just— that information, gave it to them. And he was out. He was discharged within a couple months. But again, that gives you an idea of the climate we were in in that era and serving in the Peace Corps.

JT: Yeah. Did you have— I would be scared that my mail was being screened. I mean, to even receive that letter, it had to pass through, I assume, multiple official channels. I would have been worried that you were implicated even though just somebody opening official mail in that way but I guess that’s not the case.

BS: I don’t think our mail was ever tampered. I didn’t have the sense— everything came pretty much as we expected. So I don’t think there was any actual mail tampering. And that part didn’t trouble me. There was another story related to being gay that I think your listeners might enjoy here with this. I lived in a very rural area in Colobone(?) which was up in the Sierra Leone/Guinea border at the time, really very very small population and I had really good relations with my neighbors. So the person next to me, the woman spoke no English but we communicated easily enough. I never did learn Bandi. That’s another whole story. But she, one day came over to my house bringing her niece all beautified and really pretty young woman. And the reason for this introduction and all this enthusiasm was that the Peace Corps volunteer who preceded me there married a Liberian woman. And the hope springs eternal, of course. 

JT: [Laughs] Of course.

BS: So we really had this very rather awkward social situation in my kitchen with this beautiful young woman and introduced [laughs] and all hoped that somehow something would spring forth from this relationship. But of course it never did. And there was no way to deal with that. What was interesting to me though also was that I think that many of the students, the more savvy ones, were aware that some of us were gay. And they were— For example, there was an Episcopal mission about 10 miles away in a little town called Kolahun(?). And some of those Episcopal priests were gay and the kids knew it. And there was a gay Peace Corps volunteer in that area at that same time. And in fact, I arrived in Kolahun, my first roommate was a guy from Merryville, Tennessee who just happened to be gay. And [laughs] he went back to the States three months later and we stayed in touch throughout the entire time I was in Liberia and when I got back to the States, he was living in San Francisco of all places. One of the first things I did— When I got back, I went to upstate New York and taught for a couple of years. But the first opportunity for me to get out of there occurred when I was 26 and I was off to San Francisco to visit my gay fr— Well, neither of us acknowledged we were gay until I arrived in San Francisco and suddenly, my friend—

JT: Everything clicked.

BS: [Laughs] My friend says to me, well he took me to a gay bar in San Francisco and he said, “Now I know,” he said, “You’re okay looking and people are gonna hit on you so you just tell them that you’re straight.” And I went, “Well, no.” [both laugh] “It’s okay.” Of course, all of that dissolved within a very short time. But I have to say, to go back to Kolahun, I don’t think my being gay interfered whatsoever with my teaching, with my duties, with with how I was viewed. I was called upon by an organization running a special summer program in teacher training outward bound for high school seniors. And I worked in that program as an administrator during the time I was in Peace Corps and for three months after I left Peace Corps service. And I think all of the people in that organization, the administrators, were certainly aware that I was probably gay. But again, nobody was out so that’s the world we lived in. 

JT: Yeah. I guess that experience of a charming young woman showing up and being presented to you, I feel— that certainly happened to me as well. I think I’ve heard a lot of people share a story of sort of suitors or someone being sent to you or shown to you for your consideration. I remember for Peace Corps Philippines, we had host families so to pair us up with our host families we had a little postcard and you had to find the host family that had the other half of your postcard. So I walk about this room and meet the man who’s going to be my host father. He’s got this postcard and we just sit down and he doesn’t really super want to talk and he just kind of thinks about me for a minute and then he goes, “Do you have a girlfriend?” And I was like, “Oh shoot, here we go.” Like first question. “Uh, no, I don’t have a girlfriend.” And then he goes, “Do you drink alcohol?” I’m like, “Yeah? I drink alcohol.” And he goes, “Do you wanna go to a cock fight?” And I was like. [Both laugh] “Yeah, I do. That sounds fun.” And so I think because two out of three of his questions were answered yes, he was satisfied that I would be a good host son. But later on, when I did come out to my host family, he was like, “Oh, that’s why you don’t have a girlfriend. It makes more sense now.” [both laugh] But he, you know. I guess when I hear you talk about it, if I’m understanding you correctly, it sort of felt like the community was savvy, the people around you were savvy that you were something different. I mean, obviously as an American you were different to your community, but on top of that, you had some sort of queer identity and they were not pressed to talk about that with you. Is that kind of fair?

BS: It was perfectly fine to leave everything unsaid. I don’t think things have changed much, by the way. In Liberia in the last 50 years, I have kept track as best I could and I’m still in touch with people from that era and I was aware when I lived there that being gay was criminalized. And I followed that along the way and to current times when Jewel Taylor became vice president of Liberia very recently— when she was in the senate in Liberia, proposed a bill to increase the penalty for being gay to include the possibility of the death penalty, which is really horrific. I mean, of course… That was a disappointment to me and it led me to think about what I might do to get involved in supporting LGBT people in Monrovia, in Liberia in general. But it’s a very sticky, difficult situation because any kind of activity from the outside and especially from the West is seen as a kind of interference Africans really dislike and don’t want. And so one has to tread very carefully when dealing with that kind of issue of sexuality, especially in African countries. But I’m still committed right now, and you know this, Justin, from my discussions with you before. I’m committed to the idea that there’s something more we can do to perhaps— to advocate for us or for LGBTQI organizations in places like Monrovia, Liberia.

JT: Yeah, I think it’s— in talking to Nick and in Nick’s interview, we talked about how sometimes, in Peace Corps, it can feel frustrating, that conversation because on the one hand Peace Corps wants to say — this is modern Peace Corps, not 1960s Peace Corps. Modern Peace Corps wants to have your back, it wants to support you as a queer American going overseas. At the same time, they want you to be really careful going to pride parades and they don’t want to push local politics too much, you know. And even an HIV seminar, which might have been funded by PEPFAR funds and ostensibly for queer people has to— can’t talk about gay sex, or can’t have that seminar without also mentioning that straight people can get AIDS. And so it can feel like Peace Corps is talking out of both ends a little with it, when it comes to this community. And I think that’s a frustration for a lot of people. I’m curious— kind of rewinding back to considering— just going in, I’ve been a placement officer. I know how it works these days. The kids these days can pick the country, they can pick the job, they can find everything that they want, but that was not my experience. I’m curious, in 1960, how— because it was still so new I’m sure for you, the whole system. Was it just sort of like raise your hand and they’re like sure, go for it?

BS: [laughs] Justin, my experience was so bizarre and I’m sure that to this day, it is one of the most unusual entry stories that you’ll hear. I applied for Africa. I was interested in Africa. I applied to go to Morocco. I don’t remember why Morocco. God knows what was in the mind of a 20 year old in 1966 but probably I saw Casa Blanca or something. But anyway, I really wanted to go to Africa. The continent really intrigued me so then I got the invitation and it was for Nigeria. And not only was that a bit surprising but surprising also was that it was for math— teaching math and I had an English degree. But lo and behold, I had almost a math degree and then I realized what was happening is that they needed math teachers. They didn’t need English teachers. So I said, “Math. Wow, okay, math is— yeah, I can do that. Liberia? Where’s that?” Well, no, no— sorry—

JT: Nigeria, right?

BS: Nigeria, yes. So I go to Boston and we’re in training to go to Nigeria and I’m actually learning an eastern Nigerian language, Efik, and they’re very very good. We have an intense language program and it’s going on for like three weeks or more and we’re getting pretty good. Small group of 12 or so. Others are learning Hausa and so on. Well, the civil war broke out in Nigeria. And the Biafran succession took place exactly the spot I was supposed to go to in eastern Nigeria. So here we were, all of these people in Boston in training to go to Nigeria. Okay so they said, “what are we gonna do with all these people in training?” I swear to this day somebody threw a dart at a map on the back of somebody’s office door and it landed on Liberia and they said, “Okay, we’ll send these people to Liberia.” So we ended up within the span of 24 hours changing all of the staff people who were training, brought in all of these people from Liberia and we started focusing on what we would do in Liberia. It was a very unusual situation. We never ever got a group number. They gave people group numbers in those days. Like group 4 and a half or 5 and a half, I don’t know. We had no specific location or group. When we got to Liberia, we were all in Monrovia and they gave me a job at the demonstration school at the university, teaching math. And I really was not happy with that because I wanted— I was in training to go to a rural area. I wanted to be in a rural area. I did not like Monrovia that much. It’s just a big huge city with humidity running 90% 24/7. So just really started, along with a couple of other people in the group, really pressing the administrators in Liberia to get us to other posts. And we kept it up for a couple of weeks until finally they got really tired of us. We all met. I guess 12 of us got reassigned and we were all in the Peace Corps hostel there and they had a map of the country and they said, “Okay, Smith is going over here. Jones is going up there. And Sweigart is going—“ I was the loudest and the most annoying, I’m sure, and they sent me as far away from Monrovia as they possibly could, up in the corner of the country.

JT: [laughs] They found some mountain to put you on top of. 

BS: But it really made me happy. I was thrilled. I was thrilled. It was a wonderful assignment. And as it turned out it was really a great place to be. The fit was really good.

JT: I think that something, again with my service, I’m the opposite though. I wanted an urban site. I was generally very flexible but also being gay, I felt like being in an urban setting would also give me the little bit more anonymity to be myself a little bit more. And so that was my big request, and I am glad I spoke up about that. And I think that that’s like, you know, for the listeners out there, it’s okay to voice what you would like and it’s okay to say what kind of site you want in your Peace Corps service. The worst case is you don’t get it. The best case is you get a site where you can thrive and be happy and make good connections and so, whether that’s urban or rural, definitely make sure you’re talking to your staff in the country about what environment you think you can do best in. We’ve kind of been hopping around the questions here. Let’s go into sort of what you— You get out to the rural parts, you’re a math teacher. Math was not what you’re trained in. I guess as you dug into your work a bit more and got to know your community a bit more, were there any projects that really stood out and still ring as like, I’m really proud of that work or I’m glad we did that together?

BS: Yeah, yeah. It was— Let me clarify a little bit. The math at 7, 8, 9 was perfectly fine. The most I taught was algebra and I love it, a really good teacher in algebra. The science was a little more challenging. I had all of the sciences in college, for a math major, which included 8 hours of chemistry, 8 hours of physics, 8 hours of biology. So I did have a pretty solid background in general, but the idea of teaching science, I thought, my god. I was like— I had the book, I was like three weeks ahead of the students and had to review in my head centrifugal force and centripetal force, okay, lemme— okay, I gotta demonstrate this, how do I do that? Okay. So that was a bit of a challenge there. You asked about projects. After the first year, I had decided that the school should have a library. They had no library. So another volunteer from Alabama and I decided that we would send out the call for books so we could establish a library in this school. And, my god, the books started coming. Hundreds and hundreds, boxes and boxes of books from all over. And we sat— one of our projects in our spare time was to sit and catalogue the books and shelve them and open up a library at the school.

JT: That’s awesome. Were they— I’ve done a library project. Were they good books or were they just books?

BS: They were… There were some good books. I mean, all the classics people were sending us. You know. But I would say at least half of them were good books. And there were some— And we had that discussion of course at the beginning, like what are we gonna do— this auto-mechanics thing from 1947, well you know. [Laughs] Maybe it’s of some interest. But yeah. But no, for the most part, the donations were good. I think they were screened at the origin with the same question in mind. 

JT: I remember our books came and they all got on the shelves and about a week later, we asked if any of them had been moving in our library and they said, “oh yes, the most popular one is the Twilight books. Everyone loves the Twilight books.” To date myself, Twilight was the rage so all my [inaudible] wanted to read about vampires.

BS: [laughs] I would like to— It just occurred to me. I was talking earlier about the state of affairs in Liberia these days for gay people. I mentioned the negative. I said that Jewel Taylor was really, in my mind, a really a retrograde person wanting more penalties for gay people. But at that same moment, Ellen ___ Johnson was president. And this was a person who was a Nobel Prize winner. The first female president on the continent. And she made it clear when that happened, when Jewel Taylor introduced that legislation, she would never sign legislation like that for Liberia. But the law still hasn’t changed. It’s still the case that being gay there is criminalized. But I want to clarify that it’s not quite as bad as it might have sounded with my original comment.

JT: I mean, I think we’re seeing more, even today— I know Ghana has a similar law, trying to get through their legislative body. More and more African countries, especially West African countries seem to be interested in these laws and considering— obviously complicates things for Peace Corps Volunteers and just makes life hard for queer people in those countries. So, Bill, I know that you are quite the storyteller and I’ve heard this story, I love this story. Could you tell us a little— I think you have a harrowing story from service that the listeners may be very interested in.

BS: [laughs] Yeah, the story from service is the second year I was there, I received the mail one Friday when the Peace Corps mail truck came and there was a letter for the paramount chief in the town Tamba Taylor. And I was proctoring the national exam with some other people and really wanted to get out. It was just late afternoon, it was boring. I’ll walk this letter over to the paramount chief. People in the town received their mail through the Peace Corps mail truck because the service in Liberia, the mail service, was not that good. And so this was common. This was a commonplace thing to receive such a letter. So I took it over to the paramount chief. He opened it up and he’s horrified because it turns out, it was a piece of political… track, a political track against the government and against President Tubman. And President Tubman at the time was all-powerful. He was a very good leader. He was very benevolent and was running the country but he was— he ruled with an iron fist and there was no political opposition. And so a letter like this was just— the horror. And so the paramount chief took it to the local superintendent. He had to immediately get it out of his hands. And the superintendent said, “Well, where did the letter come from?” And the paramount chief says, “The Peace Corps man brought it.” So immediately, I was caught up in this drama of this piece of political— this track being delivered. It just snowballed into this crazy, crazy episode where the chief of police came a couple days later and arrested me in my house, drove me down to the country seat at Wanjuma and said, “You’re under arrest and you’re gonna have to stand trial next week.” And sitting trial— I have to give you the background on that. Tubman was really a brilliant president in the way he administered and the way in which he actually ran and ruled the country more like a king and a chief than a president. And in order to do that, he had these what he called executive councils that he held around the country periodically in the capital of the counties. And he would show up there and just sit like a paramount chief in judgement and it could be a __ about a chicken or something minor, or it could be something serious. And there I was, I was dragged into one of these, in front of the president of the country, asked to explain myself and how this letter happened to… Well anyway, it was just bizarre. It just seemed to me totally bizarre, and I wrote a story about this. It’s in an anthology that Friends of Liberia published last year called Never the Same Again. I encourage you to look it up. Maybe we can put the link on our website.

JT: Mm-hmm yeah, we can put the link on.

BS: And actually, as an aside, it’s a book full of really wonderful tales of people’s service. Mostly Peace Corps volunteers, but others, service in Liberia. I highly recommend it. But anyways, story’s in there if you ever want to look at it again. That is of course— I should also— the most dramatic part is I was in line at this trial waiting to testify and there was a Lebanese merchant in front of me who had somehow got himself implicated in the political wrongdoing, and Tubman was just pronouncing a judgement on him. I was right behind him. And Tubman says, loudly to the whole crowd — there are cameras and everything — he says, “This man’s guilty! Lock him up without bail. Take him off.” Well it was pretty horrifying at that moment. I thought, “my god, what’s going to happen? Is this going to happen to me?” And so, I got pushed to the front of the line and somebody was reading the track from this political track against the government and so on. And Tubman says, “Okay, tell us what happened. What’s going on here?” And I wrote in this story and I swear to goodness this is true. I don’t remember anything that I said. I don’t remember. My mind must just have gone to another plain. But I spoke. And whatever I said was convincing. I don’t know how long I spoke. I don’t know exactly what I said. But the next thing, Tubman says, “Okay, the Peace Corps man is not involved in this at all. He needs to be released. The Peace Corps is not involved in any of this.” And I get outside and all the people from my school in Kolahun had come and they’re congratulating me. “That’s wonderful! You’ve been released! Oh my god.” The strangeness of the whole thing, of being arrested for this particular event.

JT: If I remember correctly too, didn’t the State Department basically have a person on stand-by to like whisk you away in case?

BS: The Peace Corps didn’t contact me about any of this at all. They just left me on my own. They must have decided that I probably was gonna be able to handle it okay, but they did have my passport on board a small plane on a landing strip in Wunjuba in case things didn’t go well with the president. They were ready to fly me out of the country on the spot, right then and there. So— and I learned that later. I didn’t even know that at the time. [both laugh] In fact, I started teaching and weeks later, I guess the field officer came and said, “You know, they had a plane on the landing strip with your passport. They were ready to fly you out of the country.” I said, “Well, thank goodness they didn’t have to.” The thing is, and it took me writing this story so many years later to realize finally what— how smart Tubman actually was. Because what was going on at that time and that moment was Tubman realized that he had to have me in front of that executive council and all those people so that the story would be told and the president could declare publicly in that forum, Peace Corps is not involved in political activity. And he knew, he knew very well what was happening, precisely what was happening. So this was staged in a way that it had to be. 

JT: I wonder if from the other side, maybe the people who wrote that letter knew that you would be the one to touch it and pass it along and maybe their goal was to implicate the Peace Corps.

BS: No, no, this was just a group that was sending information to paramount chiefs around. I imagine it could have happened to somebody else in another location if they had happened to do the same— if the same sequence of events had happened. Somebody else picked it up, took it, and then the paramount chief says, oh the Peace Corps man. It would have been a turn of events. But I happened to be the one.

JT: That’s so great. These sort of harrowing stories and things, obviously that has left a strong impressions on your mind and that makes for a great memory and a great story. When you look back on your Peace Corps experience and your career when you came back to the States, do you think that being a Peace Corps Volunteer equipped you with knowledge or skills or something that you found useful for what you did with the rest of your work?

BS: It’s hard to know, Justin, where to begin to say yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. I mean, it’s really— so many of us who’ve served in the Peace Corps have said in one way or another, we got far more from being in service in the country than we ever gave back. We might’ve given, we might be thanked by the country’s president, we might be… But the truth is it’s what we gained when we went there and served and it’s just immeasurable. It went on in so many ways, in so many ways. It solidified my identity of myself as a teacher. That was the most personal thing, I think. But I was already pretty much there, but it certainly helped. It was the most positive teaching experience of my life. And I taught now 46 years, so I can put that in a large context. One year I was there, I was teaching three class levels, 7, 8, 9 math and science from morning into early afternoon. And the second year, the first grade teacher didn’t show up. There was supposed to be a first grade teacher from Kokata. And I thought, well, I’ll fill in until the teacher gets here. And I ended up— you know exactly how that went— [both] the teacher never showed up. And I ended up teaching a class of first grade kids. 42 first grade kids in the afternoon school, after teaching 6 classes in the morning. I can’t even imagine how I did that except that I was 22 years old and full of energy and no place to put it. I mean, I get tired even telling the story now! I can’t imagine such a thing but there it was. But back to your question about now, I would say it just has given me such a perspective and an ability to analyse and evaluate. I have, throughout my career teaching college, encouraged my students to get out of the country and serve somewhere. And of course a big one talking about Peace Corps, and every now and then a student of mine actually has joined the Peace Corps. And I’m sure on that encouragement and of course that gratifying. For me, it just continues to this day.

JT: I know for me, this question is an important one to me. But I’m wondering if, you know, the context, the ‘60s and the climate that you went through— Do you feel like doing the Peace Corps and going through all that shaped your identity as a queer person and helped form that identity or added depth and nuance?

BS: I would agree with the last part. It’s added a certain psychological depth. But I don’t really think being gay had much to do with really who I was in the Peace Corps other than the fact that of course in the ‘60s, we had to all be in the closet. But if I had taken any other job in the ‘60s, that probably would have been exactly the same. So I don’t know that I can say that my sexuality intersected all that much with Peace Corps service.

JT: Yeah. I asked that— it’s true for me and I think that in the early 2000s when I served, it was such an emerging conversation and you could be out or you couldn’t be out and you were navigating all these spaces where you could and could not be yourself. So I think, having been in college and being out and then willingly going into Peace Corps where I was like, I’m gonna put this on hold. It made me realize I didn’t want to do that. If I didn’t have to do that anymore, I didn’t want to do that. So I think Peace COrps made me value that aspect of my identity in a way that I hadn’t previously.

BS: I can see that and I would say to you that that’s a major change going through from the 1960-70s. 

JT: Yeah, I can see how the context and the sort of whole general conversation could really inform that. Let’s say someone now, it’s 2024, someone is considering service in Liberia. Do you have any advice and thoughts that you want to share with them?

BS: Well, I suspect that the main thing they would need to know is that— and consider is that they’re probably going to have to be careful. You’re talking about a gay person that’s applying?

JT: Either or, that’s applying.

BS: The one thing about Liberia that still has to be considered carefully is that it is unlike any of the other countries in West Africa and so if they have any experience whatsoever with the countries that were colonized, Ivory Coast or Ghana or Nigeria, Sierra Leone, all of those countries that were colonized have an infrastructure, they have railroads, they have paves roads, they have airplanes and airports and other services. Liberia is still way, way behind all of that. And in fact, the town that I lived in for those years still, it’s just now getting electricity. It’s just now being electrified. And so service in Liberia is gonna be very different for the most part. And even in Monrovia, the major city, it was so devastated by the civil war that they’re still repairing. And so anybody that goes to Liberia is gonna deal with a lot of inconveniences, a lot of problems or issues they wouldn’t encounter any other places. But on the plus side, and this is, I would say an astonishing thing, you can rely on what I would call the natural friendliness of most Liberians. I mean, these people are just incredibly friendly. For the most part. I mean, of course you’re gonna run into gangs—

JT: Of course.

BS: — in Monrovia, same as you’ll run into them in Philadelphia. But I mean, the country especially in the rural area, I think that one of the things that astonished me so much when the first civil war broke out was how it could even happen. I came back with a sense of kind of peacefulness, people who were really very peaceful people, and when the reports of the bloodshed and the coup — the first coup was absolutely nasty — Tolbert dragged out onto the beach in Monrovia and shot. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t track it. I couldn’t fathom it because of my memories of living with the people there that I had grown close to. But of course I was very naive at twenty— I left at 23, 24.

JT: It’s interesting to hear you describe— I’ve never been to Liberia. I’ve never been to the AFrican continent but I’ve talked to so many people who are very interested in the Peace Corps. And there’s this interesting thing in candidates— they are so informed in what Peace Corps used to be, this idea of the hardest job you’ll ever love. And going to the continent, helping African people develop their countries. I think we’ve all seen sort of the old images and things that Peace Corps used to produce. And I think that’s still so in the ZeitGeist of what Peace Corps is and so many candidates want that experience. They want no electricity, they want to pull water from the well, they want that sense of roughing it. And so when you describe Liberia that way, it almost sounds like what— I don’t want to say the uninformed candidate— but that candidate that still has that picture in their mind of what the world is, it holds that up for me. And one of the things I always kind of felt was a disconnect is that Peace Corps hasn’t done maybe the best job of showing that the world has really advanced since the ‘60s and ‘70s and these places do have — a lot of places where volunteers serve do have electricity, you’re not pumping water from the well. These places still exist but they’re not the norm like they were. And so more volunteers are urban volunteers or semi-urban volunteers, suburban volunteers. And that’s not the image that comes up and maybe that doesn’t sound as well that you’re gonna go out to the suburbs and teach sort of middle income kids. But I’m not the Peace Corps marketing team. [laughs]

BS: I have a question for you, Justin. 

JT: Yeah! Okay.

 

BS: We talked recently about the applications to the Peace Corps and I have increasingly heard that there is this attitude among some younger folks that the Peace Corps is something of a representation of the old colonialism, the old imperialism, of moving in. And it really troubles me, dismays me because I don’t know where that idea came from, and I don’t know why that idea seems to be persisting, that somehow or other, the Peace Corps is akin to British imperialism of the 19th century. I mean, it seems bizarre to even think about it because it was so far removed from my experience in 1960. Can you speak to that point?

JT: I can speak on this. Before I go too much into it, I’m going to give a big asterisk. This is Justin Tabor speaking in his own personal capacity, not in any official capacity, having worked for the Peace Corps and all the other things I do. This is me speaking my thoughts. And also what I’m gonna say, Bill, is not to put down your service or to impugn anyone’s service from the past. I don’t want anyone— I’m not discounting anyone’s service or accusing anyone of doing what I’m about to say. For me, I can see this argument of Peace Corps being a remnant of American colonialism and where I see it— I think there’s a lot of ways that this can be. One is sort of if you look at who goes into Peace Corps, it is traditionally a lot of middle class, upper middle class white people. And they go into countries where that’s not the demographic, so you sort of are replaying out these racial dynamics of white saviorism, so that’s there. I think for me, where I see this to continue to be an issue— and I think to me, the issue goes back to the three goals of Peace Corps and really the first two. Peace Corps’s first two goals are to give service to other countries and to bring some of that back— or to be of service to others and vice versa. And to share cultural values. Sorry, [inaudible] the first two goals of Peace Corps. I think sometimes these two things are at conflict with each other, and it can’t be done at the same time. Going back to this idea that most of the places in the world have electricity, they’re not using wells. Peace Corps of the 1960s isn’t — I don’t want to say “relevant” but the world isn’t the 1960s world anymore. The needs have changed at a baseline level. And so I don’t think the Peace Corps has done a good job of upping the skill level to meet the level of the need, where maybe in the 1960s and 70s, to take someone who had not really taught math before, who had not been an English teacher before, who had never really farmed a field before, and just to send them to a community and be like, sure, this person is kinda— my way of calling this and it’s not nice — this dumb dumb American can kind of show up and be of use to you all, right? And we can give them a couple months of training and this extra set of hands will just really turn things around for you. That’s a very privileged idea, that our baseline is here and you’re so far down below that that anything we send you is acceptable. The Peace Corps still sends mostly untrained people. You still have a degree, you just got out of— the average Peace Corps volunteer just got out of college. And now they’re being sent to teach English or math or, again, to teach agricultural skills. They may not have the background in that, they may not understand the country, and yet, the country is much more developed in the last 40 years than they were before. So it’s not baseline English, it’s not just crop rotation that is the thing needed. It’s a higher level. And I think Peace Corps really is at this crossroads where it needs to consider, are we a skills— are we an organization sent to develop the world and to help people develop themselves? If so, the skill level needs to go higher. And I’m sorry if your general communications degree is no longer useful to this program. And that’s too bad and it’s going to alienate some Americans. Or is this a really useful cross cultural thing? And maybe we should drop the pretense of trying to help others. Maybe this is just a chance for Americans to go and have a really great long term experience where there is mutual cooperation and helpfulness, but really the underlying goal is cross cultural sharing and appreciation and these soft diplomacy things that are wrapped up in Peace Corps. So that to me is why I think there is some colonialism, because the assumption is your need is so deep and so below that this kind of college graduate can fill that gap. And again, I’m not accusing anyone— I don’t think that’s anyone’s intentions. I don’t even think that’s Peace Corps’s intentions, but I think you can read it that way. I think there’s a valid interpretation. 

BS: It’s a complex matter, there’s no question.

JT: Yeah. And my hope is that the Peace Corps gets leaders who have a vision. I do think that when I talk to my peers — I’m 40 — but when I talk to people 40 and below, there’s a lot of hope that the Peace Corps is kind of at this inflection point where it’s going to change. And something is going to click. And I think that maybe it is this crisis of numbers. We’re post-pandemic and people are not signing up the way that they used to. If you’re in the NPCA sphere, you probably have seen these calls to go out for your group to go out and do something and rally the numbers and get people applying, and there are a lot of factors in that but I do think the younger generations are looking more and more at this and thinking, I don’t know if that connects to what I want to do and I don’t know that that’s what those people over there want out of me. A lot of that change has to have Congress’s backing. It would need a legislation and presidential action and all sorts of things to have traction. But if those stars were to align, I think Peace Corps could even reinvent itself, readapt itself to be relevant for the modern age. It some ways it is kind of stuck in a model that I don’t think allows it to be its most successful version of itself.

BS: Well I could follow that up by saying when I decided a year and a half ago to start volunteering again, I came back in with a kind of hope that I might be able to contribute to some of the kinds of changes and progress that you talked about. So that’s me where I am now.

JT: It takes— people like us and people who are listening to this, RPCVs who are listening, let Peace Corps know that, if you’re writing to the Peace Corps director or contacting your representative, what your Peace Corps priorities are, because in a lot of ways, Peace Corps’s quite happy to continue to exist and just maintain. They always have hope that the budget will be larger or something like that, but Peace Corps is also quite happy to continue getting the same amount of money and having bipartisan support to not ruffle feathers. Like a lot of things in the government, there isn’t a lot of impetus for huge sweeping changes.

BS: I think it’s hard, it’s like any other huge organization, it’s really difficult for the administration there to see where change actually has to happen. I think it’s really hard. And so I agree with you, from the outside, we need to look at things, those of us who are connected on some of these, like the committees I’m on fill the group committees and the Peace Corps Association looking critically at some of these questions and challenging the Peace Corps administration to think about what they need to do differently. 

JT: Having worked inPeace Corps, one of the great things is you work with a lot of RPCVs. On the bad side, you also work with a lot of RPCVs, who can sometimes feel very sentimental and precious and want to protect this thing that was so important to them. ‘This was my memory, this was my legacy. How dare you say that it was not what I remember it to be or did not do all the good that I remember it doing?” So it’s also allowing this group of people to say, what we accomplished 60 years ago, 50 years ago, all good, all great. And changing it up and allowing it to adapt doesn’t disregard any of that, it doesn’t undo any of that. And so we have to let it grow and evolve. That’s what things do. That’s what the world does. And to pretend otherwise I think does a disservice to what is a really amazing experience. I mean, I wouldn’t do a podcast if Peace Corps wasn’t absolutely worthwhile for a lot of people. But it could be improved. And any critique I have of it comes from a place of love. Well that’s a big rant. [laughs] To wrap up this episode on that note. But, Bill, I know we’re gonna share a link to your story about meeting the president in Liberia, but are there any other things you’d like to promote, other stories or things you’d like people to read before we conclude today?

BS: No, thank you for the opportunity, but I’ll just again suggest that folks look at Never the Same Again because the title does say quite a lot and it captures, I think, what some of the things we talked about in this podcast, which is that people who engage in— go to the Peace Corps really are changed in important ways. So no, let me put that link in there and get that book. And no, I don’t get a dime, by the way, for this book. I want everybody to know that all of the profits from that book, Never the Same Again, go to Friends of Liberia and into one of their three major projects in community development or healthcare or education. And it’s a really great organization supporting Liberia. So thank you.

JT: Yeah! Well, thank you for being a guest here. I appreciate hearing this historic perspective of the Peace Corps, hearing all your stories. They’re always so interesting and amazing and like just— it’s another world, another time.

BS: I know, thank you, Justin. [Justin laughs] I’m hearing the word “historic” more and more these days. [laughs]

JT: But it’s not historic like dinosaur historic, it’s historic like Napoleon or… something that you revere. 

BS: Yeah, thank you.

JT: That’s how— But yes. And I wanna say thank you to the listeners. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Volunqueers. We hope you’re enjoying the content. If you have any questions, if you have comments, if you want to connect with an RPCV or engage with any of our programming, you can send an email to lgbtqirpcv@gmail.com and someone from our board will get back to you with more information, and also visit our website at www.lgbtqirpcv.org. And until next time, thank you for joining us. Bye.