Book Review - Gift of the USA
"Gift of the USA" is an famously critical book about the early days of Peace Corps in Kazakhstan, written by a disillusioned volunteer, Ruth Moss, who actually served here and terminated service after only one year in country. All page numbers refer to the 2002 iUniverse hardcover printing.
Reading her book, one has to agree that Ruth Moss was most likely an excellent volunteer. She was experienced, strong, able to take initiative, a hard worker, and able to build close local relationships. And so, when she delivers her climactic speech to her tearful counterpart describing why she is terminating her service after only one year, instead of cheering her brave denunciation of Peace Corps like we're expected to, we can only shake our heads and with she had had the strength to stick it out.
Ruth is the kind of person, it seems, who can find and scorn the flaws in an organization, country, or culture, but at the end of her tirade leave no good solutions, only bitterness. And it is a bitter book. Living in Kazakhstan can be infuriating at times, and as Ruth so often observed, can bring out emotions that one thought, living in the USA, were under control. Consequently, separating the substance of her critique from the anger, arrogance, and generally poor writing style takes some effort. Regarding style, you'd expect that someone who disdainfully mocked a fellow volunteer for saying "until you hear different" in a phone conversation instead of "until you hear differently" (pg. 368) would have herself avoided mistakes like "Anne was effected most by the talk..." (pg. 342). And regarding her arrogance, you'd expect that someone who (rightfully) tore into the Peace Corps country director for mispronouncing the Russian last names of guest speakers' names at the swearing in ceremony would have gotten the president of Kazakhstan's name closer than "Nurshan Nazabaev" (pg. 14).
I don't mean to sound entirely unsympathetic - behind her critique of the "peer group mentality" in the opening pages one can hear a voice that feels lonely and out of place. Every Kazakhstan volunteer knows what it feels like to get unexpectedly angry at an incompetent bureaucrat. And behind all her emotional fog lie substantial critiques of Peace Corps in Kazakhstan. The volunteers were young and inexperienced (but if that's a surprise to Rush, and it reads like it was, you have to wonder how much research she had done before deciding to join the Peace Corps). The training and recruiting sounds like it was poorly conducted. Since the sites had no real motivation to provide good housing, they often didn't. Site selection was flawed, volunteers sometimes had no work, and the administration was unresponsive to volunteer complaints. Volunteers were sometimes damagingly culturally insensitive (although I doubt that Ruth herself ranked very high on the cultural sensitivity scale - consider, for example, where she, a woman alone in a bar, gets drunk in the afternoon with a group of strange men (pg. 313) ).
But if only Ruth herself had been more able to separate her emotion from her argument, she might have stayed and continued to do good things for Taraz. After all, by the second half of the book whe was already shedding some of her one-sided fury and recognizing why Kazakhstan was the way it was. In her own words, she was "no longer just criticizing but was starting to understand the people, to empathize with them." (pg. 327) The reader wants to cheer for her as she rants against one of the Rose-Kaplan school's teacher's complaints of being "exploited" (the complaining teacher wanted an exactly equal share of the profit with the school's founder, who had taken the risk and advanced capital to start the school, instead of the normal university-level salary she was being paid). When she vividly describes to children of her counterpart's relatives how different America is from the America of communist-era textbooks, one feels proud. And her numerous public refusals to accept or participate in corrpution are an excellent example of American ideals for the people around her.
But for some reason, she actually laments, in her going-away soapbox speech, the "Western Ideals" that she brought with her. It seems that because her "Western ideals" can't be implemented immediately and uncompromisingly, she feels that they aren't worth presenting at all. Similarly, she somehow doesn't appreciate the value of her growing understanding of the real living situtation of ordinary Kazakhstani people, even though on page 421 she complains of the impossibility of programs like free condom distribution operating without a good local understanding, and on page 402 writes "'It is hidden, Jezzet. No one can see what goes on without living in this society. I'm convinced of that. Someone said to me recently, "You have an Ambassador here. Your government knows what's going on." Yeah sure. Our Ambassador gets into her chauffeur driven Lincoln and goes to see what she's shown, just like the visiting officials and the Red Cross.'" She actually says this as part of justifying why she's leaving, somehow not seeing that Peace Corps itself is part of the response to exactly this kind of problem. America, and all the other aid organizations in Kazakhstan, need people who have "lived there". One group of such people is Peace Corps volunteers. And in her afterword, she describes how the Rosh-Kaplan school she helped found had a positive, sustainable effect on English education and economic development in Taraz.
These accomplishments of Ruth's are, to the letter, the three goals of the Peace Corps: educating the host country about American values, educating Americans about the host country culture, and providing qualified individuals to create sustainable solutions to expressed needs. So why did she leave? It wasn't, I believe, because of the righteous objections she tried to put forth in the closing of her book. I think it was simple frustration, weariness, and a consequent inability to see how much good she was doing and could continue to do. It's a shame. There are good volunteers and there are bad volunteers, and if the good ones leave because the Peace Corps and the host country aren't good enough for them, then nothing gets better and the Peace Corps will. indeed, be a failure.
Fortunately for everyone, nobody heeded Ruth's advice to disband Peace Corps Kazakhstan, and instead things have gotten much better. The Peace Corps, instead of sites, now provides housing. Training for my group was conducted mostly by experienced teachers of teachers, espcially local experts. Site placements are both done more carefully, it seems, and certainly with greater support and flexibility when things go wrong. Problems persist, both in Kazakhstan and Peace Corps, but good people are persisting at improving them. We can only wish that a talented volunteer like Ruth would have done the same.
Reading her book, one has to agree that Ruth Moss was most likely an excellent volunteer. She was experienced, strong, able to take initiative, a hard worker, and able to build close local relationships. And so, when she delivers her climactic speech to her tearful counterpart describing why she is terminating her service after only one year, instead of cheering her brave denunciation of Peace Corps like we're expected to, we can only shake our heads and with she had had the strength to stick it out.
Ruth is the kind of person, it seems, who can find and scorn the flaws in an organization, country, or culture, but at the end of her tirade leave no good solutions, only bitterness. And it is a bitter book. Living in Kazakhstan can be infuriating at times, and as Ruth so often observed, can bring out emotions that one thought, living in the USA, were under control. Consequently, separating the substance of her critique from the anger, arrogance, and generally poor writing style takes some effort. Regarding style, you'd expect that someone who disdainfully mocked a fellow volunteer for saying "until you hear different" in a phone conversation instead of "until you hear differently" (pg. 368) would have herself avoided mistakes like "Anne was effected most by the talk..." (pg. 342). And regarding her arrogance, you'd expect that someone who (rightfully) tore into the Peace Corps country director for mispronouncing the Russian last names of guest speakers' names at the swearing in ceremony would have gotten the president of Kazakhstan's name closer than "Nurshan Nazabaev" (pg. 14).
I don't mean to sound entirely unsympathetic - behind her critique of the "peer group mentality" in the opening pages one can hear a voice that feels lonely and out of place. Every Kazakhstan volunteer knows what it feels like to get unexpectedly angry at an incompetent bureaucrat. And behind all her emotional fog lie substantial critiques of Peace Corps in Kazakhstan. The volunteers were young and inexperienced (but if that's a surprise to Rush, and it reads like it was, you have to wonder how much research she had done before deciding to join the Peace Corps). The training and recruiting sounds like it was poorly conducted. Since the sites had no real motivation to provide good housing, they often didn't. Site selection was flawed, volunteers sometimes had no work, and the administration was unresponsive to volunteer complaints. Volunteers were sometimes damagingly culturally insensitive (although I doubt that Ruth herself ranked very high on the cultural sensitivity scale - consider, for example, where she, a woman alone in a bar, gets drunk in the afternoon with a group of strange men (pg. 313) ).
But if only Ruth herself had been more able to separate her emotion from her argument, she might have stayed and continued to do good things for Taraz. After all, by the second half of the book whe was already shedding some of her one-sided fury and recognizing why Kazakhstan was the way it was. In her own words, she was "no longer just criticizing but was starting to understand the people, to empathize with them." (pg. 327) The reader wants to cheer for her as she rants against one of the Rose-Kaplan school's teacher's complaints of being "exploited" (the complaining teacher wanted an exactly equal share of the profit with the school's founder, who had taken the risk and advanced capital to start the school, instead of the normal university-level salary she was being paid). When she vividly describes to children of her counterpart's relatives how different America is from the America of communist-era textbooks, one feels proud. And her numerous public refusals to accept or participate in corrpution are an excellent example of American ideals for the people around her.
But for some reason, she actually laments, in her going-away soapbox speech, the "Western Ideals" that she brought with her. It seems that because her "Western ideals" can't be implemented immediately and uncompromisingly, she feels that they aren't worth presenting at all. Similarly, she somehow doesn't appreciate the value of her growing understanding of the real living situtation of ordinary Kazakhstani people, even though on page 421 she complains of the impossibility of programs like free condom distribution operating without a good local understanding, and on page 402 writes "'It is hidden, Jezzet. No one can see what goes on without living in this society. I'm convinced of that. Someone said to me recently, "You have an Ambassador here. Your government knows what's going on." Yeah sure. Our Ambassador gets into her chauffeur driven Lincoln and goes to see what she's shown, just like the visiting officials and the Red Cross.'" She actually says this as part of justifying why she's leaving, somehow not seeing that Peace Corps itself is part of the response to exactly this kind of problem. America, and all the other aid organizations in Kazakhstan, need people who have "lived there". One group of such people is Peace Corps volunteers. And in her afterword, she describes how the Rosh-Kaplan school she helped found had a positive, sustainable effect on English education and economic development in Taraz.
These accomplishments of Ruth's are, to the letter, the three goals of the Peace Corps: educating the host country about American values, educating Americans about the host country culture, and providing qualified individuals to create sustainable solutions to expressed needs. So why did she leave? It wasn't, I believe, because of the righteous objections she tried to put forth in the closing of her book. I think it was simple frustration, weariness, and a consequent inability to see how much good she was doing and could continue to do. It's a shame. There are good volunteers and there are bad volunteers, and if the good ones leave because the Peace Corps and the host country aren't good enough for them, then nothing gets better and the Peace Corps will. indeed, be a failure.
Fortunately for everyone, nobody heeded Ruth's advice to disband Peace Corps Kazakhstan, and instead things have gotten much better. The Peace Corps, instead of sites, now provides housing. Training for my group was conducted mostly by experienced teachers of teachers, espcially local experts. Site placements are both done more carefully, it seems, and certainly with greater support and flexibility when things go wrong. Problems persist, both in Kazakhstan and Peace Corps, but good people are persisting at improving them. We can only wish that a talented volunteer like Ruth would have done the same.
1 Comments:
You're excessively generous to Ruth. Having served with her, I can say that I was not nearly as impressed with her at the credit you offer. What I know of her school sounds like a success and I congratulate her on that. But she came with the opinions she left with, distanced herself from Peace Corps volunteers, and condescended to everyone. Her arrogance may have yielded some successes but I found it unfortunate that she felt the need to so staunchly and ignorantly dismiss the positive affect of young, albeit inexperienced, volunteers. Her criticisms and relaying of locals' comments stereotype a vast group of people, which fits her agenda of having something that sounds groundbreaking and revealing to say. Peace Corps is chock full of problems but anyone can paint the stereotypes she does. Those who do are as ignorant as those who do the same regarding the Kazakhs and Kazakhstani Russians themselves. I mean, come on, does anyone buy the implication that she is among the high elite of volunteers based on her extremely limited involvement with 10 years of volunteers?
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