Arthur C. Crisfield Teacher of English, Teacher’s College, Udorn

Vientiane, June 2011 Dear Lee Graham and fellow Group One volunteers, Fifty years ago, after a month in Bangkok and Chacheungsao, we were reaching our sites. Around 8 of us had taken the Northeast Rot Duan in 1st Class berths from Hua Lamphong. In Korat, at 1 AM, we were at the gateway to the , our home for the next 2 years. Here the train split. One half left with Bob, Jack and Dave for Ubol. The other half went north. Ann and Judy would have gotten off in Khonkaen. Finally, Roger, Jack W. got off in Udorn. I remember looking out of the train window early that morning, along the way, and seeing the wind blowing tumble weed across a parched, brown landscape. I had been expecting a thick green jungle with tigers and snakes in the bushes. Were we really in ? Maybe, not sure. Earlier, Glenn Ferguson had told me I would be going to Yala, a 2-person site. When the Thai teachers in Chacheungsao heard that, they said, “oh, khun aat (high ), mae, chook dii chang leuj. The south is a land of plenty, udom somboon ! Durian, aroj maak.” That made me feel like I’d won the lotto. But then, with the marriage of the Michaels, Glenn had come back and said: Yala is a 2-person site. I can send David and Marianne there if you would be willing to switch and go to Udorn. I tried to take it like a model PCV, but it felt next worst to being de-selected ! The same language teachers thought I had been penalized for something. They said, oh, khun aat (falling tone, now) – paj say-bii-lia laew-- (gone to Siberia !) Later, no matter where we wound up, it seemed most of us felt we were in the best possible place. I sure did. After 2 school years, I hated to be leaving. I reached home in June of 1964 after stops in Asia even seeing Keiko in Japan on the way hitch-hiking from Anchorage to Eugene and then a $99 ticket for 99 days on the Greyhound bus across America. Back home, my folks thought I had undergone some kind of spiritual transformation. Dad caught me gazing into the sunset one evening and I had to admit I was looking west to go east.

But the Peace Corps Green Sheet had a great job offer at the Foreign Service Institute: help develop a Lao language course. I was hired and it was fun. Many PCV friends were there taking Lao (our Jack B.), Vietnamese (Bob Resseguie and Bill Ackerman from Group 2). But I was still suffering from re-entry shock. Then, Bob Johnson wrote from the University of Hawaii that if I wanted to teach English at the Institute I would receive a stipend and tuition to study Linguistics. I could hardly pack my bags quickly enough, even though I was giving up a permanent job with the USG to get halfway back to Thailand! Having been a PCV helped get the FSI job and now it was helping get the UH one. I did not have to sit and take the GRE!

I remembered how our everfit, Khun Pittaya had left the plane at Honolulu to take a swim in the Pacific Ocean while we were in transit there. By the next weekend, I was basking at Waikiki and I looked up and saw that DC-8 stretch jet leaving for San Francisco and thinking, man, have I gone to heaven or what. Hawaii was still in the radio age with the program, Hawaii Calls, ukulele music and Tahitians dancing in grass skirts.

In Hawaii, the atmosphere was informal in the extreme. Once a “professor” came to class and announced: “surf’s up, no class today”. My students came from many countries in Asia. And I began meeting Thai and Lao on scholarships at the East West Center where Jack R. had been the year before. Later Lee Graham was there taking a degree in Public Health accompanied by his wife, Maggie. Life was great. My studies in Linguistics went well and I was hired to run another Lao program for USAID development advisors going to . Among them were several RPCVs including Frank Gillespie in PC Thai Group 2 accompanied by his wife Urai.

I continued graduate studies and took more Lao language jobs with the UH. I also went to Laos to help edit textbooks for a new Lao language medium secondary school funded by USAID that combined academic and vocational studies for all students. Previously, all upper secondary education was conducted in French. John Mc. who had started work with USIA right after leaving Peace Corps had died in a plane crash in northern Laos but it was very hard to get information about that. Recently I met a man who had been bumped from the flight John was on, that went down from “enemy” fire. The end for the US in Laos came in May 1975. It was a disappointing time for me. I had just returned from home-leave expecting to continue work there. Few Americans were aware how widespread the “secret War” in Laos had been. I stayed in Thailand for several months helping find a place where a group of who had been refugees in Laos since 1956 could take refuge. They had fled from their original homeland in northwestern with the fall of the French at Dien Bien Phu. I wrote letters to nearly all the US governors and their major state newspapers. Others were working on behalf of these determined folk as well. In September of 1975, 500 of them were given asylum in Iowa where they have prospered and where some 2500 now live. At that difficult time for me, Harvey Price provided gracious accommodations in Bangkok and kept me in good spirits for a long while then and several times thereafter. The Indochinese Refugee Program continued for a long time; I worked with it in Thailand and the Philippines for several years.

Later, staying on in the Philippines, I began work with the Peace Corps as Training Officer. Peace Corps has a long history there; by early December 1961 more volunteers were there than in all the other PC countries combined. They had developed an outstanding training staff and a language program that offered over 20 different local languages. Like our Thai Group 1 had recommended, PCVs there thought training should take place in-country. And In-service training was given after 6 months in site for each group. But suddenly, one day, not long after I started, news came that a PCV had been taken hostage by the NPA (New People’s Army) in Ilocos. All PCVs were called to Manila and repatriated within less than a week. As it turned out, the NPA had never had a problem with Peace Corps; they just wanted ransom. I moved to a new Peace Corps Program in the Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where I was Training Officer during 1992.

In 1993, I finally returned to Laos to join an AID project in curriculum development. In 1995, I married a young Lao lady who worked with the project. “Half your age plus 7”, a Lao friend told me, “would be the right age for her” ! We have a boisterous son nearly 8 now. He is named after my father but he seems to take after me more than his namesake. At about age 3, he realized I was not native and he began speaking Lao only with mom and then only English with me. When we return to the US, will he lose all that Lao he speaks so well now?

Since then I have worked with NGOs in education and related community development projects. For several years, I was helping develop teaching materials and methods in schools and communities for reducing accidents from UXO (unexploded ordnance) left from the War. The small explosives called “bombies” in Laos, remain the cause of numerous accidents and deaths among Lao farmers and their children especially in the areas where the Ho Chi Minh Trail was located and where bombing was the heaviest in northern and eastern Laos in the border areas with Vietnam. I met Emilie here when she was working to ban anti-personnel weapons world-wide. The Lao call them “bombies”; they come in many shapes and sizes from as small as a tennis ball on up.

For the last several years, I have been working with a small project funded by overseas Lao that engages communities in setting the curriculum they want their children to learn and that helps teachers practice activity-based, student-centered teaching and learning. I also work with a hydro-power project to plan for community based forest restoration and watershed management. When the generators start, we will be working in education, health, agro-forestry and tourism. I also work with 2 NGOs who are under-taking innovative approaches in reducing illiteracy. Probably 50% of the Lao population speaks a non-Lao language at home. These languages are not used in school. Many more boys than girls get an education. But much socio-economic development has been taking place over the last 20 years.

A large number of former PCVs especially those who were in Thailand are working in Laos with international organizations and with NGOs. I am looking forward to seeing you all in September. Best wishes, Art