Peace Corps at War With Africa Famine

When Loret Miller Ruppe travels on the job to foreign countries she has an unusual experience for an American government official. Director of the Peace Corps since 1981, she is constantly met by cheering people--eight deep sometimes, she says--expressing gratitude and support for what the volunteers do. When she meets people in this country, however, she often finds a more bemused response: “Peace Corps? Oh! Is it still around?”

It is. It has been around for 24 years and has sent more than 100,000 volunteers out to work in 91 developing nations. Today there are about 5,400 volunteers serving in 60 countries, and among them are the children of former volunteers.

Literally into its second generation, the Peace Corps has gone through some changes. At the same time it has experienced something of a revitalization--as was evident when 20,000 people responded to its televised January appeal for 600 volunteers to work in programs directed against famine in Africa.

News of the changes and revitalization was one of the reasons Loret Ruppe visited the Los Angeles branch of what she calls “the Peace Corps family” recently. She wanted to spread the good news and enlist their support in increasing public awareness she told them.

The Federal Building in Westwood is neither a festive nor a homey place. But Peace Corps volunteers--past, present or future--are nothing if not adaptable and innovative. So several hundred of them made do one recent evening with a colorless, high-tech, utilitarian 11th-floor conference room where they had their family reunion of sorts with Ruppe. They draped hand-woven Colombian cloth over the lecturn, set homemade cookies out on the refreshment table, filled up every folding chair in the room, sat on the floor and stood in the back of the soon-sweltering approximation of the tropics.

Judging by those at the reunion, a diverse group has been responding to those “toughest job you’ll ever love” ads over the years. Among them were:

--Former Pakistani Mohammed Khan, “Morocco I” (meaning the first group to go to Morocco), now in his 40s and a superintendent with the National Park Service and in 1962, the first naturalized citizen to serve.

--Amy Morrison of Santa Barbara, in her early 20s and about to receive her master’s degree in public health from UCLA, and off to the Peace Corps soon, as yet not sure to which country.

--William Lennox, 44, currently serving in agricultural extension in Guatemala but home for a few weeks to attend to some family business at his former avocado ranch in Oxnard.

--Doris and Lee Morton, both 55, a retired school administrator and nurse respectively, living in Palm Springs but about to leave for the Gambia for two years, victims, they said, of wanderlust and a desire to “make a contribution.”

--Bea Alford, 82, sporting her “I Refuse to Grow Up” button and telling everyone she has been with the Peace Corps for 18 years, four as a volunteer in Belize and Jamaica, 14 as a recruiter at home. She will go back to Belize in June, her third visit, for her godson’s graduation and said of the Peace Corps, “it gets in your blood.”

It seems to have gotten into Ruppe’s blood too.

‘A Great Job’

“I have this great job,” she told them, “where everybody thanks me for your work.”

Most recently it was Africans who had been thanking her, she said. She had spent two weeks in March visiting four drought-stricken countries, among them Mali where she had accompanied Vice President Bush.

Some of the changes that are taking place in the Peace Corps, she said, involve a more coordinated, long-term, teamwork approach to problems in developing countries. These changes will first be seen in Africa. As part of a need to make itself more effective in the ‘80s and profit from its 24 years of experience, the Peace Corps has launched an “Africa Food Systems Initiative,” to help reverse “the 20-year decline in per capita food output,” she said. Now in the planning stages, it will start as a pilot project in Mali and in Zaire.

Next spring 100 to 120 volunteers will be sent to those two countries to begin what the Peace Corps perceives as a 10- to 20-year effort. Specialists with “hands-on” skills in agriculture, fisheries, irrigation and energy conservation will work with generalists specifically trained for programs in selected regions. Their work will be coordinated with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Agency for International Development, and with several private voluntary organizations, she said. At the end of their two-year service, they will be replaced by new volunteers with no gap in service in between. Such carry-over has not always been the case, and that is a weakness the Peace Corps wants to correct, she said.

Adjusting Their Policies

“We were looking to coordinate with countries who were adjusting their policies toward working with the small farmer,” she said about the selection of Mali and Zaire after the meeting. The crucial role of the small farmer in solving food problems of developing countries is finally being recognized, she said.

“The time has come to bring the technological revolution to the village level. The Peace Corps is in the right place at the right time. It’s on a firm basis in these countries. It’s a unique human resource out at the village level.”

Eventually the initiative will operate in 12 countries. In her private conversation she had been talking about the Peace Corps having learned from its successes and failures of the last 24 years. Interestingly enough, she said, most of the people involved in the planning of the initiative, among them its coordinator George Scharffenberger, were former volunteers.

Later, from Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, Scharffenberger said “our fondest hope is that eventually this will be a continent-wide effort. We’ve consciously chosen two countries thousands of miles apart. Mali is in the Sahel where there is a severe drought and its food needs are critical. There is a more favorable climate in Zaire and it does not really have famine there now, but long-term factors that have caused the crisis in Mali are at work in Zaire.”

That it will be a full year before the first volunteers go out is necessary, he said, for the type of planning that is required.

Long-Term Objectives

“It’s not just a question of finding an assignment for a volunteer or taking all these different activities like crop science, irrigation, poultry raising, fisheries and throwing them all out there and calling them a team,” Scharffenberger said. “The assignments and the projects have to fit into long-term objectives, objectives that can be modified as needed. The nature of the problem is complicated. The whole challenge of food and agriculture in Africa is multi-dimensional. It’s important to see how they relate to each other. This is not a quick fix.”

Beyond such innovations as the food systems initiative, Ruppe told the group in Westwood, the Peace Corps revitalization is mainly a phenomenon that is taking place in this country.

As an example she noted that the Reagan Administration has supported it (the President held a reception for a group of 45 outward bound volunteers in the Rose Garden during National Volunteer Week last April, and protected its $124-million budget from the Office of Management and Budget’s David Stockman’s ax). And, she said, networking has been done with other government and private agencies such as AID for work in the field. Also, relationships that were ongoing in the ‘60s are being renewed now, such as a revived interest on the part of universities in what the Peace Corps is doing.

Under Ruppe’s direction the agency has been making an effort to be seen as an integral part of this country’s foreign aid planning and policies, rather than a benign, harmless entity of symbolic value, to be tolerated fondly or dismissed, but not to be taken seriously. As an instance of this she told of her action when the bipartisan commission on Central America headed by Henry Kissinger made its foreign policy report. Based on the commission’s recommendations, she requested more money from Congress, she told the group at the Federal Building, saying, “If our foreign policy is to promote economic stability and peace, certainly our volunteers should be included.” (She got supplemental grants of $2 million for fiscal year 1984 and $9 million for 1985.) Ruppe is the mother of five daughters and wife of former congressman Philip Ruppe of Michigan and is a George Bush supporter who co-chaired Michigan’s Reagan/Bush committee in 1980.

Increasing Public Awareness

To increase public awareness, she said, the agency has begun holding family receptions throughout the country.

Farmers were responding positively to the Africa appeal, she said. Their own hard times were just part of the reason, she said, commenting, “they’ve been sensitized to the face of starvation, I think the farmers are honorably motivated. We’re not just saying ‘Tomorrow you’ll be needed.’ For the next 10 to 20 years we’ll need these people.”

The Peace Corps has been invited back to Guinea Conakry in Africa, she told them. They would like to go back to Brazil, and to Panama. And to El Salvador, when there is “a little more calm.” Two years ago Haiti received volunteers for the first time. Thirty of them are doing well there, and their number will increase to 50. The five volunteers in the Sudan--”working on a renewable energy project, improving the charcoal stove”--seem to have weathered the coup well. Costa Rica wants teacher trainers. And Chad has requested volunteers. They cannot fill all of those requests.

At the Federal Building, when she mentioned the invitation to Chad, her attention was drawn to a young woman sitting in the front row. Bouncing on the edge of her chair, hands clenched upwards like someone rooting for a horse, face screwed up in an effort to contain her heart, she seemed to find Ruppe’s words an excruciating enticement to her.

Loret Ruppe knows her Peace Corps family well: “You want to go to Chad?” she asked. The young woman looked like she was ready to leave straight from the Federal Building. Ruppe grinned and kidded her gently. “But you’ve just left Mauritius.”