Remarks of Ambassador Robert P. Jackson
Mr. Minister, Mr. Prefect,
Ladies and gentlemen the representatives of ministries and other diplomatic missions,
Dear Cameroonian friends and colleagues,
Dear Volunteers,
Ladies and Gentlemen…Bonjour, Good Morning,
It is a great pleasure to speak to you on this very special day. We are here, of course, to continue a proud Peace Corps tradition in Cameroon: the swearing in of our newest volunteers. This ceremony is symbolic of the strong relationship between the Republic of Cameroon and the United States. The Peace Corps celebrated its 50th anniversary earlier this year, and Peace Corps’ relationship with Cameroon is almost that old. Formal collaboration began on September 13, 1962, when 39 Volunteers arrived here to teach English. Since then, more than 3,050 Volunteers have served in Cameroon in various sectors, including education, computer technology, small enterprise development, agroforestry and community health. In fact, agriculture, education, entrepreneurship and health constitute some of the core sectors in the strong partnership between Cameroon and the United States.
I am truly honored to participate in this milestone event. Peace Corps Volunteers are unique. They reflect the diversity of the American people. A volunteer can be a recent college graduate, a retired professional, a farmer – or any number of other things. This diversity is a great strength, as each volunteer draws upon his or her unique talents to accomplish the important Peace Corps mission.
When President Kennedy created the Peace Corps 50 years ago, he insisted on the involvement and the desire of the American people to serve their country. One of his most famous quotations, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” helped to launch the Peace Corps.
In office just after the wave of independence that washed across the world in 1960, President Kennedy understood the potential of assigning motivated youth to share their knowledge with the citizens of the new developing countries, to lend a hand to help a distant neighbor, to sow the seeds of peace, comprehension and mutual respect.
Fifty years on, Peace Corps continues to follow the founding guidance foreseen by President Kennedy. Peace Corps Volunteers continue to provide precious gifts to their Cameroonian colleagues — not really presents in the traditional sense, but contributions such as help drawing up a business plan to start a new enterprise, or a new set of techniques for providing first aid to prevent infections, or better crop yields resulting from using improved inputs and adopting new production techniques. Such knowledge is based on sustainable techniques that can be replicated by the producers, laying the groundwork for a better future for all Africans.
I salute Peace Corps volunteers for their commitment and their dedication. To their Country Directors who inspire, train and guide these volunteers, I wish you every success. I celebrate this important aspect of America’s development assistance. I thank all those who have assisted volunteers during these 50 years and who contributed to the success of this wonderful example of collaboration, partnership, and fellowship.
I am happy and proud to be here as we celebrate together the achievements of these 53 men and women, who will begin their service today. Each of them decided to devote the next two years of their lives to expanding horizons – their own and, most importantly, those of the Cameroonian villagers and townspeople with whom they will develop wonderful working and social relationships during the time they are here.
And now, to the new volunteers:
This is an exciting moment for you who are about to become Peace Corps Volunteers. More than two months ago, you came to Cameroon anxious to begin your Peace Corps experience. Since then, you have learned to communicate in new languages. The transformation has indeed been impressive. You are now well prepared to discover the myriad new things that await you in your assignments, and to accomplish the many things that you certainly have your hearts set to do. That is ample cause for excitement.
We also are excited for you as we anticipate your success and the many joyful experiences you will have during your volunteer service. For 50 years, men and women like yourselves have come to Cameroon, full of hopes and dreams, worked diligently and harmoniously with their Cameroonian partners and completed their tours with more satisfaction and a greater sense of accomplishment than they ever thought they could have. Since President Kennedy created the Peace Corps in March 1961, more than 200,000 Americans from all 50 states have worked side by side with people in developing nations around the world. You are continuing that tradition of excellence today.
While they are not here with us at this ceremony, the people with whom you will work, in the villages and towns across Cameroon, also are excited today. They are ready to welcome you and have great hopes for the work that you will accomplish together. To these people, your Cameroonian colleagues and neighbors, you will be the face of America, perhaps the only American they will ever know. Please remember that you will always be viewed as representatives of the United States of America, of the American people. I have great confidence that you will show the best of America to our Cameroonian friends and will represent our country and our people well.
As you prepare to begin your assignments in agroforestry and community health and the newest program in youth development, I congratulate each of you, and I wish you great success. I know that your Peace Corps experiences will be wonderful, and that what you begin today will remain a part of you forever.
And now, please demonstrate your sincere commitment to partner with the people of Cameroon for the next two years by pronouncing the Oath of Service. This Oath is the same one that every American in federal service takes. It is a meaningful affirmation of our values as Americans as we pledge to uphold the profound principles embodied in our Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. So if you are ready,
Please stand and raise your right hands and repeat after me, filling in the pause after “I” with your name.
I, ____________________ DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR (OR AFFIRM)
State your name
THAT I WILL SUPPORT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AGAINST ALL ENEMIES, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC, AND THAT I WILL BEAR TRUE FAITH AND ALLEGIANCE TO THE SAME, THAT I TAKE THIS OBLIGATION FREELY, WITHOUT ANY MENTAL RESERVATION OR PURPOSE OF EVASION, AND THAT I WILL WELL AND FAITHFULLY DISCHARGE MY DUTIES IN THE PEACE CORPS, SO HELP ME GOD.
Congratulations! It is an honor to welcome you as Peace Corps Volunteers. Serve honorably and productively. Enjoy every challenging moment that lies ahead. Learn as much as you can. Your experience will serve you well for all the years to come.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present our newest Peace Corps Volunteers.
Thank you very much.
ikoniхудожник на икониИкони на светци
Bamenda, the regional capital of Cameroon’s Northwest region, is a city vibrant with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations (CSOs), and Associations dedicated to improving the lives of Cameroonians. They work in the sectors of women and children’s welfare development, HIV/AIDS and malaria prevention, environmental protection, agriculture, business, technology, human rights, and the arts. As NGOs frequently seek ways to carry out their missions effectively and efficiently, establishing partnerships and collaborating with one another improves their work and establishes legitimacy.
The Northwest Association of Development Organizations (NWADO), an NGO dedicated to strengthening civil society in Cameroon, has facilitated NGO fairs in the past and recognizes the need to organize another fair for the Bamenda community. The goals for a proposed two-day NGO fair include: 1) increasing networking and resource exchange between NGO participants; 2) encouraging the spirit of volunteerism among the youth and general public; 3) promoting corporate social responsibility (CSR) among businesses through philanthropy; and 4) creating an NGO
directory for NGOs and local councils.
This two-day fair will be tentatively scheduled for January 6-7, 2012, at the Bamenda Congress Hall. It will be organized by members of the NGO community and motivated volunteers from Bamenda, under the advisory of a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer and a Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) volunteer. We plan on hosting two full day sessions, including the opening ceremony, introduction of NGOs and networking hour, round table discussions, dance performances, food and refreshments, and the closing ceremony. We will be inviting authorities and dignitaries, NGOs in the Northwest and other regions, corporate sponsors, and media outlets.
The fair will have a long-term and direct impact on the Bamenda
community. NGOs have the opportunity to collaborate with rganizations from other sectors, the youth will gain work experience through volunteering with NGOs, businesses will exude more interest in the public sector, and the non-profit sector will remain connected through the NGO directory. Executing a successful NGO fair will encourage businesses to practice CSR and philanthropy efforts should Northwest community members organize NGO fairs in the future to make these efforts sustainable.
Please support my Peace Corps Partnership Program to organize this NGO fair. Any contribution will be greatly appreciated. Please visit here:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=694-190
Thank you,
Carmen Chang
PCV, Bamenda
Andrew Shippee
Sterling, Conn. — A Sterling native will be among those honored this weekend when the Peace Corps recognizes its members who died in the line of duty.
Andrew Shippee was 28 when he was killed in July 1995 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He will be among those honored at a Fallen Peace Corps Volunteers luncheon Saturday in Washington, part of the Peace Corps’ 50th anniversary celebration.
He had completed a tour of duty with the Peace Corps in Doukoula, Cameroon, and was traveling through Africa en route home when he was killed. He had spent two years in Cameroon, teaching English and helping natives create a community garden, as well as providing information about AIDS prevention to residents. With the aid of students in the village, he had built a school to serve the children.
Shippee, the son of David and Leatrice Shippee of 911 Gibson Hill Road, was a graduate of Sterling Memorial School and Plainfield High School. He attended the University of New Hampshire and earned a degree in political science from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vt.
World traveler
He taught school for two years in Budapest, Hungary, and in Oakland, Calif., and worked with Indian tribes in Northern California before joining the Peace Corps in 1993.
Leatrice Shippee said she and her husband will not attend the ceremony in Washington. The family will be represented by their daughter, Jeannette, and cousins Paul and Scott Servan, both firefighters in Fairfax, Va., and the Servans’ parents, Robert and Eleanor, from New Jersey.
“We’re private people and we’ll be more comfortable remembering Andy’s life in our own way this weekend,” Leatrice Shippee said. “We’re both pleased our family will be represented at the ceremonies by Andy’s sister and other relatives.”
Shippee was active in Boy Scouts, earning the rank of Eagle, during his years in Sterling. Another Sterling Scout, Ben Driscoll, with help from other Scouts, created a park in Shippee’s memory along the banks of the Moosup River known locally as Wacky Pond, near Route 14 and Main Street.
A scholarship also was created in Shippee’s memory and annually provides money for high school graduates and college students who attended elementary school in Sterling to further their education.
Read more: Peace Corps salute will include slain Sterling native – Norwich, CT – The Bulletin http://www.norwichbulletin.com/archive/x110334281/Peace-Corps-salute-will-include-slain-Sterling-native#ixzz1Yi14geWD
The Providence Journal
September 18, 2011
By Donita Naylor
Journal Staff Writer
Nanci Martin (Smith), right, served in Buea, West Cameroon, in 1964. On the left is Mrs. Musako, head senior tutor at the Baptist Teacher Training College, and her children.
In 1959, Tom Wilson drove his Vespa back to college in Indiana from his summer job in a national park in California.
Two summers later, the Lincoln, R.I., native made the same trip in reverse, with his new wife, Anne, on the back of the scooter.
“We had to push it up the Rockies,” he recalled recently by way of telling how he and Anne came to join the Peace Corps in 1961. Wilson, now 73, lives in Warwick. The federal agency that President John F. Kennedy created to give Americans and people in developing countries a chance to work together and get to know each other is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week with events in Washington, D.C., and around the globe.
Kennedy had stopped at the couple’s campus, Earlham College in Indiana, during his run for president the year before. And they’d heard about his speech at the University of Michigan, when — with 5,000 students cheering at 2 a.m. — he issued an impromptu challenge from the steps of the student union, calling on students to “contribute part of your life to this country” to help solve “the problems that press upon the United States.”
In January, Tom and Anne Wilson were in Washington visiting Anne’s parents, while Kennedy and speechwriter Ted Sorensen drafted Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you” inauguration speech. The Wilsons caught a ride back to Earlham with Sorensen’s wife, who was going to see her sister, the wife of an Earlham history professor.
From D.C. to Indiana, Tom Wilson remembers, “We did nothing but talk about the Peace Corps.”
That semester, the Wilsons drove their scooter to Ohio to take one of the first Peace Corps entrance exams. Their applications were in the first 11,000 that Peace Corps Director R. Sargent Shriver reported having received by mid-June.
By then, via scooter and helicopter, the Wilsons had reached their summer job in California, a fire tower at 10,000 feet in King’s Canyon National Park with Ansel Adams views.
“The call came through on the park radio that President Kennedy wanted to talk to us, which wasn’t at all true,” he said. “It was the Peace Corps.”
The new agency needed to know if the Wilsons wanted to be in the first group of volunteers sent overseas.
“We said no, we wanted to stay in our fire tower.”
Another Rhode Islander, Frank Krajewski of Woonsocket, now 72 and living in Richmond, was in the first group sent to the Philippines in 1961. He’ll be in Washington this week attending some of the 50th anniversary activities, which culminate in a black-tie (or native-dress) gala on Saturday, with “Hardball” host Chris Matthews as emcee.
As one of the first wave of volunteers, “We’re having a lot of our own activities,” said Krajewski, who taught at the University of Nevada for 20 years and now does professional development for teachers at Rhode Island College. Out of 128 volunteers who went in 1961, “there are about 80 of us left.”
Krajewski’s group trained at Penn State, he said, then had to go home because Congress hadn’t yet authorized the Peace Corps. Finally, letters arrived with plane tickets to San Francisco, from there they were flown to the Philippines — the men on one plane, which stopped at every island, and the women on another. “The girls left a day later and landed the same time we did.”
Krajewski volunteered for a hardship assignment, on a remote island where he lived on the beach in a hut with a thatch roof and bamboo floor. He worked in an elementary school in the morning and a high school in the afternoon.
“They trained us, but the training was almost irrelevant to what we were going to do,” he said.
“We were kind of the guinea pigs. We had to create our own jobs.”
After their summer in the fire tower, Tom and Anne Wilson drove to Washington, this time in a VW panel truck, to Peace Corps headquarters. “They signed us up for Philippines III.”
Training started Dec. 27, 1961, and in February of 1962 they became the third wave of volunteers helping Filipino teachers improve their teaching of English and science. “My wife worked in the main school, in Daran,” Tom Wilson recalled, “and I paddled a boat to another village a mile away.”
Life in the Philippines wasn’t like life back home. He remembers being late one morning, paddling to his school in the heat of the day and arriving just in time for lunch and the siesta on his bamboo mat at the head teacher’s house. “I woke up in time to paddle home.”
And he recalls a morning when “I had to go down to deliver a document to the ferry boat that left at 5 in the morning.” He described the quiet road, the luminous water and the company of Tex, a dog belonging to one of the priests who lived next to the Americans.
Near the municipal building, “Tex took off, chasing a goat. A security guard at City Hall said, ‘He can’t do that, that’s the goat of the judge.’ I said, ‘That’s the dog of the priest,’ ” The guard weighed the social complexities. “You mean the dog of the priest bit the goat of the judge?” It was too much. “He just walked away. It blew his mind.”
And as idealistic young Americans ready to change the world, the volunteers learned quickly “how difficult real change is.”
Getting an idea or a project squashed, Wilson said, “made you more patient. You learned to watch and take advantage of opportunities instead of just having grand schemes.”
And working in a different culture, he said, “gives you an observing edge.” Outside your own culture, “you had to pay much more attention” — to grasp how things get done, “to learn quickly what this person is like,” to hear what people are really saying.
The skills worked well at home, too.
Back in Washington, he and other Peace Corps veterans turned around a school for inner-city youth. In Chicago, he helped invent a “school without walls.” He became a pioneer in education reform.
When he returned to Rhode Island with his second wife, Leslie Oh, to whom he has been married 26 years, he used the same skills to study the British system of evaluating schools. He helped develop the state’s SALT, or School Accountability for Learning and Teaching, program, and now he helps accrediting agencies improve how they evaluate schools.
“There’s no question that for me, it was one of these root experiences that really changed my life,” Wilson says now. “It’s had a lot to do with how I think about what’s good and what’s true.
“It really does have an idealism to it, an American idealism. It’s really a good thing to go try and really help somebody, even though you screw up. We felt really solid that we were doing something, and what we were doing was very American at its heart.”
Kennedy had hoped that men and women “doing the same work, eating the same food and speaking the same language” as those they helped would be a “source of satisfaction to Americans and a contribution to world peace.”
Nanci Martin was a senior at the University of Connecticut when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. She and a group of friends took the Peace Corps test in response.
In June of ’64, she started training and by September, she was one of about 70 volunteers in the western part of the African nation of Cameroon. She was stationed in Buea, which had only a few buildings: a post office, a prison, a large hotel, the Buea Mountain Club, the prime minister’s palace and the Baptist Teacher Training College, where she worked alongside Baptist missionaries and African educators.
Students who wore uniforms to school came from families that still wore loincloths, she said. She remembers girls spending whole Saturdays plaiting their hair in spectacular designs, like those that only recently became popular in the United States.
“We shared a Jeep with four other stations to allow us to get groceries at Victoria,” she said, and once the gas tank sprang a leak. “We came up with the idea to chew lots of gum and stuff it in the hole in the tank until we could reach help.”
Now Nanci Martin Smith, she lives in Portsmouth with her husband, a retired Navy officer, and keeps in touch with her friends in Cameroon. She still volunteers. She co-manages the thrift shop at the Navy base and serves on Portsmouth committees and the juvenile hearing board. She and her husband sponsor Cameroonian naval officers when they come to the Naval War College and keep in touch after they go home.
She helps support a women’s group that one officer’s mother started “way out in the bush,” and she collects books for the group. The Peace Corps gave her confidence and started her on a lifetime of service.
“It hasn’t stopped,” she said. “It just keeps going.”
On Oct. 25, the Rhode Island Returned Peace Corps Volunteers will walk on the South County Bike Path to honor those who died in service. The walk starts at 11 a.m. at the Kingston Amtrak station on Route 138.
NOTABLEThey also served
NATIONALLY
Lillian Carter (India, ’66). President Jimmy Carter’s mother was a volunteer at the age of 68. An award in her name is given each year to recognize an outstanding volunteer older than 50.
Christopher Dodd (Monción, Dominican Republic, ‘66-’68). U.S. senator, Connecticut.
Chris Matthews (Swaziland, ‘68-70). Host, NBC’s “Hardball.”
Jim and Jessica Doyle (Tunisia, ’67-’69). Former governor and first lady of Wisconsin.
Samuel Gillespie III (Kenya, ‘67-‘69). Senior vice president, Exxon Mobil.
Robert Haas, (Ivory Coast, ‘64-‘66). Chairman of board, Levi Strauss.
Edward Dolby (India, ’66-‘68). Director, Family Dollar Stores.
Reed Hastings (Swaziland, ‘83-‘85). Founder, CEO of Netflix.
Michael McCaskey (Togo, ‘62-‘64). Chairman of board, Chicago Bears.
Priscilla and Thomas Wrubel (Liberia, ‘61-‘63). Founders of the Nature Company.
dnaylor@providencejournal.com
