Rowland Bennett Oral History Interview
Interviewer(s): Robert Klein
Interviewee(s): Rowland Bennett

Robert Klein: Today is October 5th, 2004. This is Bob Klein. I'm interviewing Rowland Bennett, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in 1962 to '64 and served in Nyasaland I, a secondary education project. So let's go back maybe year before you joined and talk about where you were and what was going on.

Rowland Bennett: Well, I was a college student. I was at Wheaton College in Illinois, and Kennedy had been elected.

Robert Klein: What were you majoring in?

Rowland Bennett: I was a literature major. English literature major.

Robert Klein: Right. And how close were you to your degree in?

Rowland Bennett: Well, I graduated in 1962. In June of '62.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: So in my senior year, I began to think about what I would be doing next, and I really wanted to go to graduate school. I applied to a graduate school in English literature.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And was rejected. That was a very crushing experience.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And I also applied to Wheaton's theology program.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: But didn't really want to continue there. It's a fairly narrow point of view and I didn't really want to continue there, so I didn't. Even though I could have gone on for a master's, the Peace Corps idea came to my attention. Kennedy was in the presidency. He'd only started in 1961.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: We'd gone through the Cuban Missile Crisis, which I didn't really pay that much attention to. I wasn't that aware of what was going on in the outside world, but was certainly aware of the Peace Corps. It got a tremendous amount of attention in the press.

Robert Klein: In the years, had you known anyone who joined the Peace Corps?

Rowland Bennett: Well, it was brand new.

Robert Klein: Yeah, yeah.

Rowland Bennett: It was brand new. I don't, let's see, um, in March 1st, 1961, Kennedy signed the executive order that created it.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And they worked real hard to get a couple of projects in the field before the end of that year.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And even in 1962, there weren't that many projects going out. Now, the Malawi project started training in October of 1962.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: So it was 4 or 5 months after my graduation.

Robert Klein: Let's go back a little bit. Where did you grow up, what part?

Rowland Bennett: I'm from Rochester, New York, originally.

Robert Klein: Did you go to high school there?

Rowland Bennett: I was born there and graduated from John Marshall High School in Rochester.

Robert Klein: During your high school years, did you do any travel? Did you do any special summer projects? Any volunteer work?

Rowland Bennett: Uh, not in particular. My family would take us out to Ohio and Illinois. My parents were farm children who left the farm and went to college. So I had a taste for seeing, getting around. You know, I'd been across the country and back in a family trip, but not overseas. In fact, my parents never went overseas in their entire lives.

Robert Klein: Yeah. How about during your college years? And what did you do with the summers?

Rowland Bennett: You have to remember, Bob, the jet plane was the new phenomenon back in this time. And the, the only transcontinental jet plane was the Comet that the British had put in the air. And along about that same time, Boeing came up with the 707, which was the first intercontinental public air transport.

Robert Klein: But what about, what did you do during your summers in college?

Rowland Bennett: Oh, different things. Um. I think that perhaps the thing that gave me a taste for adventure was going to Alberta, Canada, in 1960. One of my classmates just asked me off the spur of the moment in June, actually, after exams. He said, how'd you like to come to Alberta for the summer and be a cook for my building crew I'm going to be on? So I was up in northern Alberta, got up into an area that was within 100 miles of the Arctic Circle.

Robert Klein: So you had done some international travel.

Rowland Bennett: Oh yeah, you know, I wasn't afraid of, yeah, I guess you could call Canada international.

Robert Klein: So now as you're getting close to graduation, you, you know about the Peace Corps?

Rowland Bennett: I got ahold of an application and filled it out and sent it in.

Robert Klein: Do you remember the application process?

Rowland Bennett: It was basically a form. Maybe six or 7 or 8 sheets.

Robert Klein: Do you remember having to take an exam as well?

Rowland Bennett: No.

Robert Klein: They may have given it up by then.

Rowland Bennett: I don't remember an exam.

Robert Klein: When you, when you fill out the application, somewhere you indicate an area of preference of assignment. And they also ask you about your skill in the second language. Do you remember?

Rowland Bennett: I have no skills in any second language. I always did miserably in any language course I ever took. And I think I've taken five different languages in my life. But fortunately Malawi was in the British Empire system.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: It was Nyasaland when the British were there. And then when it became independent.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: It changed its name, took a new name. Malawi.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And English is the official language. There are 17 or 18 tribal languages there. So I did my work in English.

Robert Klein: So June comes, you get your degree from Wheaton.

Rowland Bennett: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: And had you heard from the Peace Corps at that point or were you still in the application?

Rowland Bennett: I don't think I filled my application in till May. I would guess it was May.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And I went off for the summer as a door-to-door salesman selling pots and pans, I believe it was. And, um, I was at my brother's house in Rochester when I got the letter from the Peace Corps offering me a place in Nyasaland with training to begin in October. I was so excited. I could, I could tell you exactly where I was when I opened that letter and just bursting with excitement. And it took, it took quite a few days for me to calm down.

Robert Klein: No second thoughts at all at that point?

Rowland Bennett: I think my parents, my mother probably had second thoughts.

Robert Klein: I was going to ask.

Rowland Bennett: But this was it. I mean, once I got that letter, I accepted it immediately.

Robert Klein: And at that point, you didn't know anyone who had been in the Peace Corps or who knew any?

Rowland Bennett: No.

Robert Klein: And do you have siblings?

Rowland Bennett: My older, my brother is six years older. My sister is six years younger.

Robert Klein: What was their reaction to what you were doing?

Rowland Bennett: I don't really actually remember.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay. Okay.

Rowland Bennett: I really don't.

Robert Klein: But you knew your folks were a little apprehensive.

Rowland Bennett: Well, my mother, you know, was worried, but my mother was not going to stop me. But if you want to get a little glimpse of my mom and father and their, uh, their interaction with this. When I arranged for that Canada trip, my classmate Paul Belisky and I worked out that we would take the train out of Chicago, uh, up to Winnipeg, and from there we would hitchhike. Now that's about a thousand mile hitchhike, I mean, more than that, because Grande Prairie country is 500 miles north of Edmonton and Edmonton is pretty far north of Calgary.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: So, um, at that time, my parents were in the process of moving from Rochester to Evanston, and my father was in Evanston at the new job and my mother was closing up the house. So he called mom and said, Roland has a chance to go to Alberta. Well, how is he getting there? And father said very shrewdly, well, they're going by train and from Winnipeg they're going by car. And my mother didn't catch the subtlety and gave her approval and off I went. So there was the same sort of trepidation. I remember she sent me a clipping when I was in Malawi.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: From the local paper that said there was some unexplained disease that was breaking out in, uh, in Kenya. People would go, they would laugh and laugh. Continuous laughter. That was, that was the main symptom. And she was worried about this. And I wrote back and said, Mother, I don't think you have to worry. That's a thousand miles away from where I am.

Robert Klein: Yeah. So where did you report for training?

Rowland Bennett: We went to Syracuse, New York. Syracuse University had a contract to train us starting in October.

Robert Klein: Do you remember the?

Rowland Bennett: It was over by, um, before Christmas.

Robert Klein: Do you remember the group's first gathering? You're reporting in. Approximately how many were there?

Rowland Bennett: There were about 46, 47. We lost several in the process of what they used to call deselection.

Robert Klein: We'll get there. About equal men and women?

Rowland Bennett: I think so.

Robert Klein: Any married couples, do you recall?

Rowland Bennett: A few. And a few marriages came out of it.

Robert Klein: Yeah. What, do you recall your impression? You know, now you're meeting 30 some other people who also said they're going to join the Peace Corps. And then there's you. Do you recall?

Rowland Bennett: I think I had a little bit of insecurity. I was a skinny, gawky kid. I went to a college which was relatively unknown, although now I realize what a terrific education I got there. And there were kids there with, um, there were a couple of lawyers. There were Harvard grads. And quite an impressive array of young people.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: So it took me a while to, um, feel comfortable with them. And also from my background, I was a non-drinker. And after training, just about every day, the, uh, maybe two thirds or three quarters of them would go across the street and spend the rest of the evening in the bar.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: I didn't participate in that, you see.

Robert Klein: Great American tradition.

Rowland Bennett: But it was a growth experience for me in that coming from this religious background that was pretty sure they were right, I had to reconcile the fact that here were a bunch of people who were going to go overseas and give of themselves for two years and get nothing back materially for this, um, whose personal habits weren't as tight, tightly wound as mine. And yet I could see they were good people. And that was a very good experience for me and helped me to unwind from this position that I'd found myself in.

Robert Klein: It was the beginning of cross-cultural understanding.

Rowland Bennett: Well, yes. Even understanding other Americans.

Robert Klein: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk about the structure of training, how you spent your time and what's?

Rowland Bennett: Well, it was, training was new. It was just the early days. And I don't think Peace Corps really knew how to do it very well. This was even before they set up the Puerto Rico experience. And we didn't do any things like the Outward Bound type physical testing. We did pull ups and calisthenics and things, but it was mostly the way an academic institution would do training. So there was a class in American history and foreign relations and a class in Chinyanja, the language class. And health, how to take care of your health overseas.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: It was more structured that way and lasted through, um, November. It was about, let me think. Let me do this count. About eight weeks long altogether.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: Eight or nine.

Robert Klein: And it was a comfortable setting. I mean, you just coming out of school, so you're back in a classroom.

Rowland Bennett: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: And what about the language? Was that emphasized at all?

Rowland Bennett: I thought they, under the circumstances, they did a good job. There really weren't published language material for Chinyanja or Chichewa. It's almost the same thing. But there were some students, grad students from Malawi, that were hired by Syracuse University and a linguist headed that up. He didn't actually know the language, but the African men did a good job and some of the students did very well at it.

Robert Klein: Did they concentrate on speaking rather than trying to teach you the grammar and everything?

Rowland Bennett: Yes, they did both.

Robert Klein: How did you do in the language?

Rowland Bennett: Not well. I just don't have the brain for it, I guess. I learned a lot about languages, though, which has been a nice store of knowledge.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: For, for my work. But I didn't really learn much more than 30 or 40 vocabulary words and phrases. But I would like to add that when I got over there in Malawi, I was placed at a secondary school to teach English, and I felt really guilty about not really getting, uh, my language skills built up. But that would have required getting out into the village, because in the school setting English was the appropriate language. And I finally decided I would be doing a better job for my students to just work with them in English conversation and not have them work with me in learning Chichewa.

Robert Klein: Yeah. We'll talk about that when you're in the field because that was an issue in the Peace Corps. Uh, there's also a component of training usually called area studies.

Rowland Bennett: Yes.

Robert Klein: And do you recall who ran it or?

Rowland Bennett: Uh, I recall who ran the American history and foreign policy because the guy came into our class and on the first day and he knew everybody's name from memory, that made quite an impression.

Robert Klein: Wow.

Rowland Bennett: The area studies I don't remember the personality but, um, it was the beginning of a lifelong interest in Africa. I have continued to read about Africa, African history, foreign affairs. I follow African events.

Robert Klein: So it was kind of African studies and then some concentration on the colonial history of Nyasaland.

Rowland Bennett: Colonial history and the current political goings on. There was a liberation movement and there were some key figures there. We did have a man named Malan. I may not get this right, but Eduardo Malan [Mondlane]. And he was actually from Mozambique.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: Which is a neighboring contiguous country. And he was a faculty member at Syracuse. But he was also on the liberation front over there. And in due course, he became a member of their new government or, or at some point he was assassinated because of his political commitment.

Robert Klein: But Nyasaland must have been under a provisional transitional government that the British had decided to grant it independence.

Rowland Bennett: Yes.

Robert Klein: So that in effect, that's what permitted the Peace Corps to come in.

Rowland Bennett: Yeah. Peace Corps knew that the British were leaving.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And it could, uh. So we talked to the people who would be. I didn't talk to them.

Robert Klein: Yeah, well, right.

Rowland Bennett: The administrators talked to the Africans who would be leading the government, and they said, well, what we need most right now is more secondary school teachers because we don't have enough educated people.

Robert Klein: How about, uh, whether, was there an area of training on technical studies?

Rowland Bennett: Yes, there was some education training from the people at the graduate school of education.

Robert Klein: You had never taught before?

Rowland Bennett: No.

Robert Klein: And did?

Rowland Bennett: Well, I had never taught in a classroom.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: I had done Sunday school teaching.

Robert Klein: Right. And how did you feel about the prospect of, you know, walking into a class and becoming a teacher?

Rowland Bennett: Perhaps I was a little bit concerned, but I might have been an education major, but I was more interested in learning real content in college. And I never took a single education course. I avoided them in order to take content courses. But it was no, there was no issue once I got in the classroom.

Robert Klein: The other big event or big thing that happens during training is the selection process and generally it includes some kind of psychological testing. You may even have been interviewed by psychiatrists.

Rowland Bennett: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: Do you recall that?

Rowland Bennett: Yeah, sure.

Robert Klein: Was it extremely stressful? I mean, how did the group handle it and how did you handle it individually?

Rowland Bennett: Everybody had an interview. I don't know. I don't know if I'd ever seen a psychiatrist before.

Robert Klein: Most people don't.

Rowland Bennett: You know, I mean.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And I don't know. I assumed he was Freudian. But whatever I said didn't hurt me. I know that. But a few, I think three of us were deselected.

Robert Klein: So during training, would people disappear, I mean, how?

Rowland Bennett: There were as I recall three. Now, one, one fellow was an extremely verbal young man who had gone to the University of Texas, and he'd been either the editor or high in their newspaper.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And he had an approach to things where he would engage in a sort of debate.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And, and you could see he was just contrary, you know, he loved to be contrary. And he didn't, he wasn't shy about it. And I thought that might have been the reason why he was deselected.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: He was, uh, difficult.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And we felt he was difficult too. The second fellow had told the psychiatrist that he'd been in a bar room fight.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And he mentioned this afterwards in the brief period between his interview and the time he was packed away and sent home. And that's all we could figure out on him. But the bigger picture was that the Peace Corps didn't want to embarrass itself overseas.

Robert Klein: Right, right, oh yeah.

Rowland Bennett: So they tried to spot problems or potential problems. And it was very hard on us emotionally to see these kids disappear and they wouldn't tell us why.

Robert Klein: Right. Right.

Rowland Bennett: Someone was deselected. We only could guess about that. And of course, you wondered, would you be next?

Robert Klein: Yes. Did that tend to? Did the group coalesce? I mean, was there some kind of group spirit evolving, even if it was on negative grounds that, you know, if there's all this stress about selection, you kind of want to hang close to your buddies or the friends in the group?

Rowland Bennett: Uh, I think there was in the group. I was more of an outlier, more of a, of an individualist. I had a smaller circle of friends, and these were usually the kids that didn't want to be over in the bar.

Robert Klein: Right. Right.

Rowland Bennett: But it was stressful for us because nobody knew what you did to get deselected.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Were part of the world, uh, the American studies, did it include world communism?

Rowland Bennett: Oh, sure. The Peace Corps was an anti-communist movement, if you ask me.

Robert Klein: Sure. Okay.

Rowland Bennett: It clearly was an attempt to win goodwill in third world countries.

Robert Klein: Well, did you have a sense that you were then being sent as an agent of anti-communism? Don't let me put words in your mouth.

Rowland Bennett: Well, to some extent, yeah. Sure.

Robert Klein: Okay. But you don't recall any specifics of that kind of training?

Rowland Bennett: You know, back in those days, it would have just been part of the wallpaper.

Robert Klein: Okay. Okay. Final selection comes and the group is now pared down to about how many?

Rowland Bennett: About 43, 44. Well, they flew us home for Christmas. We could go to our own homes.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: I'd like to add, because it was very exciting to me at the time, first time I ever flew in an airplane was courtesy of the United States government.

Robert Klein: Right. Right.

Rowland Bennett: And they flew me from Syracuse to Chicago.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And then back to, uh, we left from JFK. But then it was called Idlewild International Airport.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: So I think they took us from Syracuse down there by bus, if I recall.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And it was a great day. It was early January, first day or two of January.

Robert Klein: Well, let's say you've couple of days left.

Rowland Bennett: Yeah, a couple of days home and then.

Robert Klein: No second thoughts? You know, mother didn't say?

Rowland Bennett: No.

Robert Klein: You know, don't go.

Rowland Bennett: No, I was very keen to go.

Robert Klein: And were you shopping then? Did you have to buy enough handkerchiefs for two years?

Rowland Bennett: Oh yes, got a big trunk and put things in there that later we found out you could easily buy in Malawi.

Robert Klein: Right. Right. So then you finally end up at Idlewild. And was it a charter flight or a regular flight?

Rowland Bennett: It was a Pan Am.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: Regular flight. And we, let's see.

Robert Klein: Couldn't have gone direct.

Rowland Bennett: No, it didn't go direct. But I remember that, um, well, we certainly changed planes in Europe, but I remember they brought us into Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And we had an overnight there.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And then, um, after that. And that was on a Comet.

Robert Klein: Oh.

Rowland Bennett: British Airways. And then on to Blantyre.

Robert Klein: Right. In this, the whole process from Idlewild on. Well, at what point in the whole process did you meet or become aware of Peace Corps staff?

Rowland Bennett: Oh, well, we met Peace Corps staff in training.

Robert Klein: People from Washington?

Rowland Bennett: No, our country director, Bob Poole.

Robert Klein: Ah, okay.

Rowland Bennett: And his assistant. I don't remember the assistant's name, but he was a colorful fellow who had been a, what's called a great white hunter in East Africa.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: He was not as highly educated, but he was an adventurer who knew East Africa.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And that, no, those staff people were a presence.

Robert Klein: Because there was no project in the country at the time. I mean, you were the first.

Rowland Bennett: We were the first.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: I don't think they were in Syracuse all the time, but they certainly came in. Maybe they flew on back to Malawi to work on things.

Robert Klein: Did any staff members escort you there? Must have been some.

Rowland Bennett: There must have been, yeah.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: Don't remember.

Robert Klein: Arrived in Blantyre.

Rowland Bennett: Blantyre was the largest city at the time, still is. It was a commercial center. And it was about one hour's drive from the capital, which was Zomba.

Robert Klein: Was there a reception when you arrived?

Rowland Bennett: Oh. Some of this is faded, a little foggy in my memory, you know.

Robert Klein: Well, that's alright.

Rowland Bennett: It's been over 40 years.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: But we were housed at a very nice teachers college.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: By African standards. Right away you realize things are different in Africa.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: I mean, even a paved road was something to notice. There were lots of paved roads in Blantyre, but you could get out of town and in very short order be on a dirt road.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: But Soche Hill College was this teacher's training school where they housed us and fed us and gave us classes and they would take us out by bus to see this and that in Blantyre.

Robert Klein: How long was it?

Rowland Bennett: I would say two weeks, three weeks maybe. Three and a half weeks. Most of January 1963.

Robert Klein: Were you, uh, were they trying to get you to match up to the school year or a school term anyway?

Rowland Bennett: Yeah, school term began late January. So they were giving us a time to acclimate to the country, to the food.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: Get us comfortable walking around. And because it was unusual to be a white in Africa at the time.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: Maybe not so much in Blantyre, but in the countryside you could certainly be an object of great curiosity, especially with the little children.

Robert Klein: Yeah. And that was the entire group secondary teachers?

Rowland Bennett: Yes.

Robert Klein: Okay. And at what point during the three weeks did you begin to, did you, did you meet people you'd be working with like headmasters of schools or Malawians who were teachers?

Rowland Bennett: Well, we had Malawians around who were helping us with the training and more language instruction. Lots of contact with Malawians. And I must say the Malawians are lovely people and they were very courteous, respectful, friendly, interested, and grateful in what we were bringing to their country.

Robert Klein: Early on, did you have any?

Rowland Bennett: But we did not meet the people from our various secondary schools, no.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: No. The Peace Corps office was doing the placement. They told us we're working on the placement. We're taking these things into consideration. We're not taking certain other things into consideration.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And there was one, there were a lot of government schools, and there were a number, quite a number of Catholic schools, boys schools and girls schools.

Robert Klein: Were they mostly boarding schools?

Rowland Bennett: They were all boarding schools.

Robert Klein: Okay. Okay.

Rowland Bennett: And then there was this one Protestant boarding school for boys.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: Called Robert Blake School at Kongwe. And they were telling us that the people there were so conservative that it might be a difficult placement, but they also told us they were not taking our religions into any consideration for this placement. Well, that would have been in keeping with the First Amendment, I imagine, and American policy. So I sort of thought, gee, that would be a nice place, that Protestant place for me. But I guess I won't, I won't go there because they're not taking religion into account. And in the end, and I only figured this out much later, I think they realized I would be comfortable there and a lot of the others would not be comfortable and would chafe.

Robert Klein: Because religious studies are built into the school.

Rowland Bennett: Well, religious studies was in the British curriculum.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: So every school had a certain amount of Bible knowledge that was taught. But, um, it's just that more of the people, the missionaries there would have been what most people would consider to be straight laced. And I was straight laced myself. So in the end, it worked out great because I really had a wonderful relationship with those.

Robert Klein: So that's where you were assigned?

Rowland Bennett: I was assigned to Robert Blake School.

Robert Klein: During your first three weeks, did you have much interaction with British officials or British people who were still in Nyasaland?

Rowland Bennett: The boma, or the government center, was about two and a half miles away, and the, uh, the district commissioner was named Mr. Ashton, if I remember correctly.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And he invited us three, there were three of us placed at Robert Blake School at Kongwe, invited us for dinner. Well, that was quite an experience because he had this huge, by Malawi standards, huge white, uh, white, um. The white stuff they put on?

Robert Klein: Whitewash?

Rowland Bennett: Whitewashed house and veranda and lawns and gardens and servants and uniformed policemen around giving all this grand service. And, um, that was a real insight into the British colonial picture. So we were invited there and also meeting a lot of African.

Robert Klein: But do you recall your interaction with him? I mean, what did he, what did he make of you, you as Peace Corps?

Rowland Bennett: Well, he was the perfect gentleman. The British, though, in general, were resentful of us Americans. They knew they were leaving.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: They, um, thought that America had let them down in the Suez Canal crisis in 1956.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And that was, that really pulled the keystone out of the British Empire. I didn't even know what they were talking about. Now I've read up on it. Now I understand why they were resentful.

Robert Klein: The death knell.

Rowland Bennett: But they were leaving and they knew they were dropping from a first rate power to a second rate power. And here were these young American kids who thought they knew so much.

Robert Klein: So you went, you were taken from Blantyre. Did the school come and pick you up and?

Rowland Bennett: No, Peace Corps delivered us in Land Rovers.

Robert Klein: During the three weeks, did the Peace Corps staff try to establish any policies about where you could travel, what they expected of you? Was there any kind of trying to shape what it is you would be doing? Do you recall any of that?

Rowland Bennett: Yes, there certainly was. I don't recall too many specifics. But the one, one specific I remember was. [tape break] Back of my mind, I'd like to be a writer. And as soon as I heard that, it was like, oh well, I'm off the hook for that. Now, a year later, Malawi III showed up and Paul Theroux was a member of Malawi III and I remember specifically meeting him down at the rest house that the Peace Corps kept for us in Blantyre when we needed to, you know, get back to town and we had a place to sleep. And I remember talking to him and he said to me, I'm going to be a writer. And I thought, yeah, sure. Behind my smirk, you know, I thought, yeah, yeah, right. I'm going to be a writer, too, Paul Theroux. So that was quite amusing.

Robert Klein: And I think he stayed only a year as a volunteer.

Rowland Bennett: He did write for publication.

Robert Klein: Oh, yeah.

Rowland Bennett: He broke the regulations and he wrote critical material about the Banda government and he published, it was published in material that was not in country. It was for public, to be read by Americans, but it got back to Banda. And Banda said, get him out of here. They kicked him out.

Robert Klein: Well, let's go back to your beginning. You arrive at the school. There are three of you.

Rowland Bennett: Three of us. Right. A couple and me.

Robert Klein: And are you all to be English teachers?

Rowland Bennett: Yes. Well, no, he was a, he was a chemist, industrial chemist, and he taught science.

Robert Klein: And it was a fully established school, so it had?

Rowland Bennett: The school had been running since 1950.

Robert Klein: Did it have O-levels as well as A-levels?

Rowland Bennett: It was O-level.

Robert Klein: O-levels.

Rowland Bennett: Not A-level.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: Four years.

Robert Klein: Four years.

Rowland Bennett: Four years.

Robert Klein: Okay. Because in Ghana it was five. We had five forms. But, uh. Well, let's, let's talk about living conditions, then we'll talk about the teachers.

Rowland Bennett: Well, you know, we expected to live in grass huts from the publicity and the Peace Corps. And subsequently I have met volunteers who have lived in grass huts.

Robert Klein: That's a rarity.

Rowland Bennett: But we were at a mission station and the missionaries were South African. It was built and paid for by the reformed, Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. So there were about five Afrikaner families there.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: With children often. And there were, uh, 2 or 3 Africans on the teaching staff.

Robert Klein: Malawians?

Rowland Bennett: Malawians. And then also the three Americans who showed up. And that was the staff. It was an international staff, you might say. And they had built for their staff, really it was missionary housing, but lovely brick bungalows. You had running water, you had a wood stove for cooking. A little kitchen, it was very smoky, but cooking was done in the wood stove area or on the wood stove, like a cast iron stove.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: The hot water for your bath, or should I say bath, had to be heated by building a fire outdoors in this gadget that looked like a barbecue. Except instead of where you'd cook meat, there was a 55 gallon petroleum drum which they filled with water. And you could scald yourself to death on the first day. And on the end of the second day, it was lukewarm. So every two days the houseboy would build a fire.

Robert Klein: Did you have electricity just at night?

Rowland Bennett: The electricity was either from a generator or from a hydroelectric dam that the missionary had built.

Robert Klein: 24 hours then?

Rowland Bennett: In the rainy season.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Okay.

Rowland Bennett: I don't think they usually gave us 24 hour electricity. And an anecdote I like to tell is this couple who were there who had been married ten years and were childless. And I guess said, well, I guess we're not going to have a family, so we might as well do something interesting.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: She became pregnant pretty soon. Now you have to picture that at 10 of 10:00, the lights would flash a couple of times to warn you. And then a minute later, the lights would dim down to nothing. So this couple, I guess, had some time to relax. And pretty soon she became pregnant with twins and they were not happy there. They didn't particularly like the missionaries and they went home after one year.

Robert Klein: Okay. Well, let's go back to, to you and your. So you're given the house.

Rowland Bennett: Well, I shared the house actually at the beginning. There was kind of a rolling personnel changes there between the missionaries and the Africans. So at some times I lived with an African teacher and at some times I lived as a guest in the home of a missionary family and sometimes there was the three Peace Corps guys. And the second year we were together.

Robert Klein: Okay. Were there any British teachers on staff?

Rowland Bennett: Yes, we had a British volunteer named Jonathan Fox.

Robert Klein: A VSO?

Rowland Bennett: VSO.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: Volunteer service overseas.

Robert Klein: Right. Right. Sort of the equivalent of Peace Corps. But they would make fun of Peace Corps because they just came. They didn't have to be trained or anything.

Rowland Bennett: Well.

Robert Klein: Do you recall that?

Rowland Bennett: British snobbery, but Jonathan Fox was a terrific character. I wish I knew where he was today.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay. So you walk into a very well established system.

Rowland Bennett: It was well run.

Robert Klein: And what was, and what was the headmaster's expectation of the role that you would play?

Rowland Bennett: Well, they said to me, you're the junior and senior English master. And I was a little caught off guard because I was surprised that they gave me so much responsibility right from the start.

Robert Klein: And your seniors would be facing the, uh.

Rowland Bennett: The exam.

Robert Klein: The West African, well, not the West African.

Rowland Bennett: The British O-level exam. Anyway, I said, well, gee, why, why me? And Dr. Lowe. Dr. Lowe, I'd like to say something about him in a minute. But he said, well, it's your language. I couldn't argue against that because the Afrikaners were using English as a second language and so were the Africans.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: Now, Dr. Lowe actually in the '30s came over to the States and completed a PhD at Yale in 1940 in the field of race relations, which is no longer a field, but he was a very sophisticated man and a lovely man who did a good job running the school. I was, he was a real good friend to me.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And it was great working for Dr. Lowe. And he ran a wonderful school. And I would like to also add that even though our school did not get the top students generally.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: Because they went to the government schools, our work with them meant that, uh, showed up in the final exams. Generally, we had the highest pass rate for the secondary school, ordinary levels.

Robert Klein: I'm wondering. There was a great sensitivity about what was going on in South Africa on the part of.

Rowland Bennett: Oh, yes.

Robert Klein: Peace Corps officials and other Americans. And yet you're placed in a situation where a significant number of the staff and the school itself is being run by Afrikaners.

Rowland Bennett: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: Was that a problem? Were you ever alerted to being careful not to say anything or avoid any kind of political discussion? How did that play out?

Rowland Bennett: Well, I was already aware of apartheid. I'd read Cry the Beloved Country. I knew that, uh, I knew what apartheid meant, at least on paper. So I was a little uncomfortable with these people. And it took me a while to realize that they were probably the cream of the crop.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: I got a chance to travel to South Africa.

Robert Klein: There was no restriction on that?

Rowland Bennett: Not at that time. Later they said you shouldn't go to South Africa. But at the beginning it was okay. And through my contacts at the mission station, I had people to visit and stay with and saw a lot of interesting things in the three week tour in South Africa. But I certainly didn't like apartheid when I saw it in South Africa.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And, um, and I'll never forget this. One of the teachers drove me down to Jo'burg [Johannesburg], and from there I hitchhiked. But when we got to Jo'burg, he pulled in his, his car needed some work. He pulled into a repair shop and on the back of a, like in Europe, there is an oval that lists the country and ML was on the back of his car. And the mechanic said, what are you doing live up there living with those monkeys? So I had a sense of the derision that these missionaries had to put up with by their career choice.

Robert Klein: So one would assume that the missionaries were not racist or would not particularly supporters of apartheid.

Rowland Bennett: They weren't. They were insofar, well, maybe they supported apartheid.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: As a political thing. And we used to have great discussions. Some, some were more supportive than others.

Robert Klein: Yeah. I was wondering whether even sending you out initially the Peace Corps had given you any cautions or if they were even aware of.

Rowland Bennett: Oh, sure, we were aware of it. We were all a little tense about it because the United States had a strong position, anti-apartheid position.

Robert Klein: But no official letters, policy statements from Peace Corps to you?

Rowland Bennett: No, no.

Robert Klein: Or pulling you aside and saying you're going into a?

Rowland Bennett: Oh, no, I knew I was going into that.

Robert Klein: So it was not said that from by Poole and others?

Rowland Bennett: No.

Robert Klein: Okay. I just, uh. How about, let's talk about your adjustment into the teaching schedule. You were a little disconcerted with the fact that you were teaching the two top classes.

Rowland Bennett: Oh, they put a lot of confidence in me right off the bat.

Robert Klein: I know what they did, what about you?

Rowland Bennett: I adjusted to it right away. You know, I loved the classroom experience and I was very devoted to it. I cared a lot about my students.

Robert Klein: Was it English literature mainly?

Rowland Bennett: Well, you had the set books.

Robert Klein: Right, right. You remember the set books you were working from?

Rowland Bennett: Well, I remember My Family and Other Animals by Durrell. That was a very funny book. The boys loved it.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And I wish I could name the other ones, but you really had Shakespeare. We always did a Shakespeare play. Macbeth. You had to work through line by line virtually to make sure the kids understood what was going on. And you develop vocabulary, and then they would write about what was going on. And there was a lot of correction of writing and blackboard work, examples and things like that.

Robert Klein: One of the classic problems that teachers in Peace Corps going into your situation have is you come in with your American English and, for the most part, your students are attuned to British English, British accent, as well as their own language has a different lilt to it.

Rowland Bennett: Definitely.

Robert Klein: Do you recall your adjustment to that? I mean, how you finally figured out that they didn't understand you at all?

Rowland Bennett: Well, I slowed down my speech and became more articulate, and I think that has stayed with me to some extent. I do try to, to speak very clearly, and I'm aware of vowel differences. It used to annoy me with the kids in my project who weren't able to make the shift to the longer vowels. So someone would say Kongwe, that's K-O-N-G-W-E. But it was Kongwe, you know.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And Banda. President Banda instead of President Banda, things like that. But I had an ear for that. And I did get a lot out of the linguistics training from Syracuse.

Robert Klein: So there weren't major misunderstandings.

Rowland Bennett: Well, I had a lot to learn.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: You know, I had to make these adjustments, but it was very clear that I had to adjust to British rather than trying to get the boys to talk like me. But they did love to imitate us and say things like gonna, wanna, shoulda, you know. And I'd hear these things and they didn't quite sound right, you know. And I'd sort of cringe and think, oh my goodness, look what I've done to their fine basic English instruction.

Robert Klein: Describe your classroom setting.

Rowland Bennett: Well, the classroom blocks were brick with corrugated, I think it was asbestos roofing.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: There were no drop ceilings.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: Each class had eight hanging light bulbs. And at night, the boys would come back and study from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. in artificial lighting.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And then they'd leave for bedtime.

Robert Klein: How many students in the class?

Rowland Bennett: Thirty. 30 seats. And every seat was full. Very, very little absenteeism. Everybody there was there to learn. They were respectful. They were earnest.

Robert Klein: And they were living on.

Rowland Bennett: Living. And they had dining hall and dormitories. One dorm was two stories. Now, that's very unusual in up country Malawi to have a two story building. And that building was named Mulanje, which is the name of the high peak in, in Malawi. So it was a great novelty to have this two story dormitory and a point of pride if you lived in Mulanje.

Robert Klein: Yeah. How did you address the students, do you recall?

Rowland Bennett: We were pretty informal. The British tradition was your teacher is aloof and sir and all that. When we entered the classroom, they all stood up. Well, right away we said, hey, fellas, you know, relax. It's okay. But that was a mistake. I see that as a mistake. We should have fitted in a little more closely to the established tradition because it confused them. They didn't know when to stand and when not to stand.

Robert Klein: During your first six months, did you have any discipline problems?

Rowland Bennett: I had no discipline problems.

Robert Klein: And were you able to sort of work with the married couple to process your experience? You know, your, to work through your adjustment to teaching there. Was there anyone you could turn to to talk it over to just to get some sense of whether you were doing it well or poorly?

Rowland Bennett: Uh, the married couple and I were comfortable with each other, but I don't really feel that I ever became good friends of theirs. They were not happy, as I said. They made some mistakes at the beginning with their houseboy. They had their houseboy sit and eat with them and he fell apart. He became no good for doing his work in about ten days or two weeks. And I had better luck with my houseboy.

Robert Klein: Well, how did you know what was the roles between houseboy and, uh, teacher, you know, master?

Rowland Bennett: Well, you know, we Americans have this egalitarian inclination that we're all equal and we're all, nobody's better than anybody else. But you carry that over into a, uh, master servant situation and it doesn't work in Africa because not everybody there shares this assumption. The hierarchy is very clear.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: So it was a mistake to try to break this down.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: We didn't know what we were doing when we did try to break it down.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And it usually didn't work out well. Now, on the other hand, I think the schoolboys appreciated the opportunity to get to know us Americans as people and see us more as people rather than somebody on a pedestal. So you have to differentiate, and this is where it gets thick.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: You have white privilege. You have teacher privilege. You have the employer privilege, uh, the foreigner, the guest privilege. All these things can be jumbled up together and you have to be there quite a while to begin to sort out the social implications of your role and their roles.

Robert Klein: Had anyone in training or had Peace Corps staff kind of, had there been any group sessions talking about roles?

Rowland Bennett: Yeah, some discussion of it.

Robert Klein: So you were at least aware of the possibility that, you know, it wasn't exactly as it might be back in the United States?

Rowland Bennett: Oh, certainly. Yeah, certainly aware of that. But theory is one thing. Practice is something else. Now, you asked me, where did we process these things? Mostly we processed them back when we'd get down to the rest house in Blantyre and talked to other volunteers. Or go visit our colleagues at other schools.

Robert Klein: So you had, you know, the circle of friends you had gotten through training that you could meet in Blantyre and more readily talk over your teaching.

Rowland Bennett: Well, anybody. Once you came back into Blantyre from being upcountry, you were ready to be an American and chat and discuss things. And that was a great decompression. You probably experienced the same kind of thing because there's a tension in being immersed in another culture and it's hard on the nerves. And, you know, you go through the three month, six month cycle. And after six months, you're very likely to be depressed. And but then you sort of build back up out of that. And by the second year, you're really in tune, I thought.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And comfortable.

Robert Klein: Let's stay within the first six months. Do you recall what you were writing home to your family?

Rowland Bennett: You know, I have never really examined those letters.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay. But you have them?

Rowland Bennett: It's a lot of detail. I have them, yes.

Robert Klein: Do you recall your own sense that after 5 or 6 months that you'd, you were, you made it, you were a Peace Corps volunteer. You were in Africa. You were teaching. You were teaching, as far as you could tell, reasonably well. Was there any sense of that evolving or?

Rowland Bennett: Um. Yes, I think I, those things I, not exactly what you said, not that I was all that conscious of it. But one consciousness you didn't mention was pretty soon I didn't think of myself so much as a volunteer as a teacher at Kongwe School. Peace Corps in due course became an agency, you know, a couple of hundred miles away who you really didn't see very much. You didn't really need very much.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: I was much more a part of Kongwe and Dowa boma district and this American visitor who was teaching. And that was much more real to me than the external structure.

Robert Klein: And you, and the world you were in at the school was relatively comfortable.

Rowland Bennett: Very comfortable.

Robert Klein: And you had, you were friends with the headmaster and others.

Rowland Bennett: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: How were you being paid?

Rowland Bennett: Well, we got this living allowance.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And it was deposited into a standard bank. We had a check book.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: Once a month, we got X dollars. I think I recall $105, which by today's standard, might be 4 or 500.

Robert Klein: Right, right.

Rowland Bennett: Our housing was taken care of by the school. So we had transport, food. Health was taken care of by the Peace Corps.

Robert Klein: Did you still would do the food shopping?

Rowland Bennett: Well, the school ran a farm and they would deliver fresh vegetables, which took a lot of work to clean up. They didn't exactly come in Birdseye frozen packages.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: But that's how we got the vegetables. Fruits we would buy in the market and also beef we would buy in the market. And every perhaps three weeks on average, I would get into Lilongwe, which was about 30 miles away. It's now the capital, but then it was not the capital.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And it was a great treat to buy some Cadbury chocolate bars and some cheese and a pound of butter. I mean, bacon, sliced bacon.

Robert Klein: Yeah. But you could get bread and eggs locally and stuff?

Rowland Bennett: My cook baked bread.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Rowland Bennett: Eggs came from local chickens.

Robert Klein: Did you physically go into the market to buy the meat?

Rowland Bennett: Sometimes.

Robert Klein: And was that frowned on or was that acceptable?

Rowland Bennett: It was fine. But more often the houseboy went in.

Robert Klein: Okay. Okay. Let's talk about the other, the school itself.

Rowland Bennett: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: Generally at boarding schools, most of the masters have additional duties.

Rowland Bennett: Yes.

Robert Klein: Housemaster or you supervise evening studies.

Rowland Bennett: Exactly.

Robert Klein: Sports or what have you. What were you assigned?

Rowland Bennett: Well, I did night duty. One, one teacher would watch 300. I mean, can you imagine this in the United States? Three hundred schoolboys quietly studying under the supervision of one teacher for two hours, uninterrupted. Couldn't happen here.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: I did the choir.

Robert Klein: Oh.

Rowland Bennett: I took my choir down to the national competition, and they were very good. But we, we were disqualified because, uh, we, we. Every choir sang three songs. And one of the songs had to be in praise of President Kamuzu Banda. Well, nobody told me that. So we didn't have a song in praise of President Banda, so we couldn't have won. I didn't know this. But we were very good singers.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Had you had choir training?

Rowland Bennett: Yeah, well, church, church background.

Robert Klein: But enough that you?

Rowland Bennett: I'm a baritone. I can read music.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Okay. And who had done it at the school before you?

Rowland Bennett: I don't know.

Robert Klein: And the students? Was it, did they volunteer to join the choir?

Rowland Bennett: Mm hmm. Football was the, “futball" was the big sport. Remember, every year we'd have a teachers versus the students game.

Robert Klein: And you dared to play?

Rowland Bennett: I play. Yeah. I played soccer and I went out for soccer at college. I wasn't much good, but at least I knew what direction to kick the ball and how to dribble and things like that. But that was great fun because the schoolboys were much better than we were. Oh, basketball. I introduced basketball.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: To this school. I found a few miles away there was a recruiting station for mine labor in South Africa. And these people had through the years had some trucks that when they were done with, they just discarded the parts. And I got two truck chassis, which were essentially C beams bolted together, maybe 16, 18 feet long. We cut through in order to fold down one end and attach the blackboard, the backboard to that and buried the other end in concrete. And I actually made a regulation basketball court on a dirt surface.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: Built the backboard out of masonite on a frame and Peace Corps supplied me the hoops. They were regulation hoops. We started teaching basketball.

Robert Klein: And the students took to it?

Rowland Bennett: Yeah, they took to it. They didn't like to jump very high. I couldn't get them to, uh, touch the rim.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Rowland Bennett: And so then I said, look, anybody who can touch the rim, I'll give you two shillings, 6 pence, and boy, several of them were immediately able to touch the rim.

Robert Klein: Yeah. So, so during school term you had, you were pretty much, pretty busy.

Rowland Bennett: Oh, we were always busy.

Robert Klein: What about weekends? What did you do?

Rowland Bennett: Either go into Lilongwe.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: If we stayed in town, there was church services that I would go to. Not every week, excuse me, but, and they were all in Chinyanja.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: So I didn't really understand too much of what was going on, but I would go. Uh. And hiking, visiting, socializing with the other teachers.

Robert Klein: On the staff?

Rowland Bennett: On the staff.

Robert Klein: Both African and Afrikaner and?

Rowland Bennett: Afrikaner. Yeah.

Robert Klein: Sometimes.

Rowland Bennett: And reading. A lot of really nice quiet time to read.

Robert Klein: Sometimes people in a, going into another cultural situation find one particular friend who sort of becomes the, a mentor or, you know, the informant about the culture and, you know, you can communicate about your mis- or your puzzlement. And he or she would be able to say, well, the tradition that's going on is. Was there anyone like that? Or do you recall trying to become familiar with the traditional culture of your students?

Rowland Bennett: Dr. Lowe had been in the country since 1950.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: He was good at that. I used to spend a lot of time with the mechanic, the missionary mechanic, the one who built the hydroelectric dam.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And generally took care of electrical issues and car problems and things like that. Not an educated man, but a very informed man. We used to play chess late into the night.

Robert Klein: Malawian or?

Rowland Bennett: No, he was South African, Afrikaner guy. Called him Uncle Chris, Oom Stoffel. He'd been a missionary for a long time and he and his wife were very insightful and we'd ponder issues, differences, and why things are this way.

Robert Klein: Conversations all in English, I assume?

Rowland Bennett: Those would be in English. Yes. All my conversations were in English. Now, I roomed for a while with a guy named Gus Mutambala, an African man who had gotten a master's in economics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Robert Klein: Ah.

Rowland Bennett: And he was a very sophisticated man, bachelor at the time, later married. We were housemates for a while.

Robert Klein: And was his village nearby?

Rowland Bennett: I have no idea.

Robert Klein: Okay. Okay.

Rowland Bennett: He didn't go home very often.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: But that was a nice friendship. I was living with him for 6 or 7 months.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: Later on, he became active in politics. But he was, um, got on the outs with President Banda and was able to get a job at the American embassy, which protected him from any political retribution because Banda was very tough on people that he didn't think were supporting him. And there was a lot of jailing brutality. Now, now we realize there was a lot of political assassination going on all around us.

Robert Klein: Well, let's stay in the political area. Um. Nyasaland became independent while you were there. At what point in your service did it come, after you were up at the school for a few months?

Rowland Bennett: It came essentially three quarters of the way through. So the first year it was British or British protectorate. Then we had six months of transition, quote unquote, at which time it was sort of a partnership. The civil service were, the British civil servants were still there, but they had colleagues, partners in the Africans who were going to become the African civil servants. And then on July 6th, 1964, it was formally given over to the Africans with President Hastings Banda. And I went down to Blantyre, to the National Stadium.

Robert Klein: I was going to ask, yeah.

Rowland Bennett: In I think perhaps Zomba, I'm not sure, but it was Rangeley Stadium. They changed the name later, but it was a soccer stadium. And Prince Philip came, came in.

Robert Klein: Did you need special tickets to get in?

Rowland Bennett: I don't know how I got in, but I was certainly there.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: Prince Philip with a Rolls-Royce convertible.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And Banda in a red, I believe it was a Sunbeam convertible, which is much more of a low-end car, but a bright red Sunbeam. Drove around the track, you know, and then took their seats in the honor, place of honor. And at midnight, the Union Jack came down and the Malawi Kwacha flag went up and the fireworks were terrific, right over our heads. So it was a great thing to be there.

Robert Klein: Were there a lot of the other volunteers there?

Rowland Bennett: Oh, some, but mostly Africans.

Robert Klein: And Peace Corps hadn't said one way or the other stay. [tape break]

Rowland Bennett: Office. But I can't imagine that they would have in any way inhibited us from, from being there. I mean, we, the whole stance or posture of Peace Corps office was supportive of independence.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And they didn't tell us certain things that were happening which were embarrassing to, uh, or would have been embarrassing to the new government, such as political assassinations, for example.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay. Okay.

Rowland Bennett: So there was a political assassination while we were still in training that rubbed out three of the intellectual leaders of the movement to, to take over and Africanize the country.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And these guys had brought Dr. Banda back from West Africa. Banda had been, had gotten out as a very young man.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: When it was unheard of to do so. Educated in America, became a physician, practiced medicine in England, married an English woman. And then when the African Freedom movement began, he was already in that circle of people in London who had been discussing independence with the.

Robert Klein: Like Kwame Nkrumah.

Rowland Bennett: Nkrumah and Mr. [George] Padmore was the, like the intellectual leader of this.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: So he lived in Ghana and the young Turks in Malawi that were interested in liberation brought Banda as a figurehead, to their minds, an older man, you know, that the British would respect, but they never intended him to be, to take charge. But he, he did take charge through strong arm methods.

Robert Klein: So in the.

Rowland Bennett: I wanted to just finish that.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: So three of these guys were run off the road and shot up while we were still in training.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And we were told that they had died in a car accident. Well, they did die in a car accident, but it was a planned accident. I didn't know about that, the truth about that, till after I was out.

Robert Klein: So then in the time you were there in the run up to final independence, that you knew, Banda and the group that was being prepared to take over the government, there were no wrinkles in that. I mean, there weren't. Was there opposition? Were you advised not to talk?

Rowland Bennett: Well, we were advised not to talk politics. Don't get involved in politics.

Robert Klein: But were there any regional dangers that if you were in this area that was likely to be anti-government or anti-Banda? And do you recall any of that?

Rowland Bennett: Yes, I was quite aware of that.

Robert Klein: But directly impacting on you?

Rowland Bennett: We were told keep your nose out of politics.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: So we listened, but we didn't participate. Now, if you did participate, uh, some of the volunteers went to parliament and applauded the certain people, and they were, they shouldn't have been applauding anybody. So they were either reprimanded or sent home, as I recall.

Robert Klein: While you were a volunteer?

Rowland Bennett: Uh huh.

Robert Klein: Okay. Okay.

Rowland Bennett: Yeah. So we, we listened. We kept our ears open. Now, I remember one day that Orton Chirwa came and had lunch with Agus and Tambala. And since we were housemates, I was at the table. Orton Chirwa was one of the few lawyers in all, Black lawyers in all of Malawi. He was trained in London, um, or in Britain and he was part of that in- group. But in due course he became unhappy with Banda's ways and was put in prison and died in prison. But I remember chatting with Orton Chirwa, who was, had to be in the top 5 or 6 people of the inner circle at one time. So we'd listen.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Let's go back to school. The, uh. After two terms, did you have a long break?

Rowland Bennett: Yeah, there were, um.

Robert Klein: The long break.

Rowland Bennett: The year started in late January, early February.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And ended about Thanksgiving time.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Rowland Bennett: Now seasons are flip flopped over there.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: So their, their summer is in December, January, February.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And that's also the rainy season when everything turns green.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And their cold season is June, July, August. By then things have gotten all brown. So generally you'd have a term and then a three week break, a term, a three week break, a term and, and then the 6 or 7 week break. Yeah.

Robert Klein: What did you do during the short breaks and then the long break?

Rowland Bennett: Uh, we either made, stayed around and did something, a project. You had to report down to headquarters this what I'm going to do. You had a certain amount of eligible times for, to be off.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And I usually traveled. I traveled to Zimbabwe, Zambia, and South Africa during, during my off times. Or I traveled around Malawi and went to see volunteers at other school situations. In the long break, as I explained, I went to South Africa.

Robert Klein: Were there any restrictions on your travel? Like you couldn't go to Europe, you couldn't return to the U.S.?

Rowland Bennett: We were told not to, not to return to the U.S. And not to, no, travel in Africa was approved.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: Period.

Robert Klein: During your whole first year, did you have any visitors from the Peace Corps out at your site?

Rowland Bennett: Well, there were two inspectors. I think they were State Department people. For all I know, they might have been CIA.

Robert Klein: We like to think not.

Rowland Bennett: And these guys showed up one day unannounced and, um, they told me, they showed me their IDs, told me they were, you know, inspecting the program. On that particular day, I was ill, as we learned to say in British English. And I was not teaching. I was in my bathrobe at home.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And these guys showed up and they sat around and chatted for half an hour or something like that. But I was embarrassed that it appeared to be I was bluffing, you know, and not on the job, but apparently it didn't really bother them. And actually, from my point of view, it seemed to me they were lucky because they got this, you know, government tourist trip with plenty of leisure time driving from place to place.

Robert Klein: Do you recall if they spoke to your headmaster?

Rowland Bennett: I'm sure they did, but I don't.

Robert Klein: Other than?

Rowland Bennett: I don't know. I didn't worry about it.

Robert Klein: And you don't recall names at all?

Rowland Bennett: No, I don't.

Robert Klein: Okay. They could have been Peace Corps evaluators.

Rowland Bennett: Yeah. Yeah, well, I'm sure it was some sort of evaluation. They said they were evaluating the program.

Robert Klein: Any, any official Peace Corps staff come up and visit you?

Rowland Bennett: Yes, there were.

Robert Klein: Often or?

Rowland Bennett: No, not too often. You know, you'd usually be warned. You know, they'd let you know.

Robert Klein: How?

Rowland Bennett: A phone call. There was only one phone on the, on the entire mission station. It rang in the headmaster's office. And also it was attached to his front wall of his, on his house, on the wall, as we say, on the porch.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And it was a, uh, wind up phone. You had to crank it to, to get into the operator in Dowa and so on.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: You didn't really worry about phone calls too much.

Robert Klein: Did Poole come out?

Rowland Bennett: Yeah, I think Pool came out. I don't specifically remember that, but I do remember being visited.

Robert Klein: But you said that really through the first year, you developed a sense that Peace Corps was almost incidental, that you, you were there and you were doing a job.

Rowland Bennett: For all practical purposes. I'm very consciously became aware that it was not really day to day so much that I was a Peace Corps volunteer as that I was a teacher at Kongwe School.

Robert Klein: Now, initially that grew up certainly through the period at that time with almost every Peace Corps project, particularly with education, was that the policy was it's not enough to just teach. You need to become involved somehow in other projects or involved somehow otherwise with the culture. And I had evaluators come and say, the first question was, well, how many Ghanaians do you know? And what they were implying was that it wasn't enough to work on the school compound I should possibly be doing. Do you recall that at all?

Rowland Bennett: Um, I had a certain amount of guilt about that because I was not getting out in the villages as much as I thought I would be.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: Um. So in that sense, I didn't feel like I was a terrific Peace Corps volunteer.

Robert Klein: So you had a sense that?

Rowland Bennett: Yeah, I wasn't really.

Robert Klein: Ideal image?

Rowland Bennett: Yeah. Yeah, there was an ideal there.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: That I wasn't fulfilling. Now, um, but as I explained back near the beginning, I soon decided that my job was to help these young people function in English.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And be more conversational and so on. And that that was where I should be and not worry about getting out in the village. And even as it was, I was often behind in returning my papers, you know, the corrections and things like that. So I didn't really think I had a lot of time to get out in the village. Now, on the other side of the coin, the missionaries sometimes would go out to see outlying churches, and that might involve a long hike on a Sunday, being there for a church service. We had a wonderful adventure driving up country and around to get to the certain place, which was really only about ten miles away. We had to drive this big C-shaped journey on dirt roads. But on another occasion we walked that, over hill and dale.

Robert Klein: Uh huh.

Rowland Bennett: And I really got in to see what the backcountry was like when we got off the roads and away from the colonial influence, you really saw Africa as it had always been. Another thing I did was to walk over to an American missionary's house. He was a family man. He had three boys. Named Irwin. They were Assemblies of God. And their mission house was about four miles away. And I often would walk as the crow flies on these little footpaths that I discovered are all through the grasslands of, of Africa, which you don't see when you drive by.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: But I'd cut across country up and down and go see the Irwins and they'd, they'd feed me hamburgers.

Robert Klein: Worth the walk.

Rowland Bennett: Worth the walk.

Robert Klein: And as you're coming to the end of the second year, did you have any idea that possibly you might want to extend your service?

Rowland Bennett: No. I was in love with a college sweetheart and we'd been writing the whole time. I think her letters helped me a lot to keep, you know, emotionally stable and gave me a future to look forward to. So I was eager to get back and see her. I left service a little bit before they wrapped, before the project wound up, what they now call close of service, COS. Every Peace Corps volunteer knows COS. But the term COS was unknown to me.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: When I had my checkout interview a little bit before Thanksgiving time. Now, of course, they don't have Thanksgiving over there, but the Americans were aware of Thanksgiving and they gave me my ticket in, that is the right to buy passage home. And I arranged with the travel agency there to fly to Lusaka, then to Nairobi, then to Entebbe, then to Khartoum in the Sudan. Oh, sorry. I left out Addis Ababa. Then Khartoum, then Cairo. So I stayed in each of those cities at least one night, sometimes four nights.

Robert Klein: You could do it in those days.

Rowland Bennett: You could do it in those days. And that was a great experience. Spent almost no time in Europe. I think three, a night in Paris and three nights in London, and then got on home for Christmas.

Robert Klein: And was Poole up in Kenya by the time you finished?

Rowland Bennett: No. But Poole died in an auto accident in Kenya. He was the country director.

Robert Klein: Right. So at the end of the two years, you know, how did you, how at the time do you recall what, how you evaluated your experience?

Rowland Bennett: Oh, my. It was a great experience and it deeply changed me in many ways. When I got back to the States, I was much less materialistic. And I walked places. I would say to Margaret, when we were living on the edge of Cleveland, we didn't have a car. Newlyweds without a car, but on the bus line. And I would say we were, if we were say going shopping downtown, I'd say, Margaret, shall we take the bus or walk? Now, she thought I was nuts, but to me, to walk three or 4 or 5 miles would not, you know, would not be an unusual thought. And a lot of those things I really had to gradually change when I came home because you realized how out of step you were.

Robert Klein: Did you go right into graduate studies?

Rowland Bennett: Uh, no. I came home and she was in graduate school and I by then had been accepted at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Robert Klein: Ah, okay.

Rowland Bennett: And we got married in September. And the plan was for me to start seminary, but we weren't able to find a job for her that first year. So instead, we stayed in Cleveland, where I went to library school, and I got my library degree a year later. By then she had a job and we came to Princeton, and in due course I became a librarian rather than a clergyman. And I think, you know, the Peace Corps kind of helped me pull away from the evangelical conservativism.

Robert Klein: Sure.

Rowland Bennett: That I'd had at Wheaton. And I really wanted to be let out of that box. I, I realize that now. So all that worked out.

Robert Klein: Were you able to maintain any kind of continuing contact or contact through the years with people in Malawi?

Rowland Bennett: Well, I've been back to Malawi twice, in 1968 with Margaret after we'd been married for five years to show her, show her what, where I'd been, and also to see friends in Addis Ababa and in Kaduna, Nigeria.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And I went again to go to a wedding of one of those missionary families' children in 1996. Uh, so I am in loose touch with a couple of the missionary people. Occasionally I communicate with the school and more likely, through secondhand information, I learn what's going on at the school.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And the most interesting contact is just a few miles from here in South Orange is a couple where they're both from Malawi. He came over here for college education in the early days and his wife came later to study nutrition and they met and married, had four children. Their children went to high school with my children.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Rowland Bennett: And I'm good friends of theirs. Often I'm over there to have, a couple of times a year and they're always teasing me, you don't come enough.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: For nsima and ndiwal. But you can go over there and have good African cooking anytime.

Robert Klein: And you've been involved in returned volunteer affairs, I gather, through the?

Rowland Bennett: I'm very active. I'm, I went to that first meeting when they considered forming a national group that was at Howard University.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: On the 15th, I believe that was, 15 years after founding.

Robert Klein: Could be.

Rowland Bennett: And I was at the 25th.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And I was at the 40th, which was actually the 41st. I just was in Chicago in August. I've been a member for many years of what's now called the National Peace Corps Association. I've been a member of the New Jersey Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. I've been a president of that for the last 3 or 4 years.

Robert Klein: And the Friends of Malawi as well.

Rowland Bennett: Oh, yes, Friends of Malawi.

Robert Klein: And your group still, there's still some communication among the group and you have reunions?

Rowland Bennett: We had one reunion in the Smokies.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: That was set up by Phil Durand, since deceased. That was not just Malawi I, but it was like 5 or 6 of the first Malawi groups.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And but a lot of Malawi I went to that.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And it looks like we're going to get together this summer, Malawi I. Maybe only 6 or 7 people.

Robert Klein: Now that you're retired, you know, look back over a busy life and what have you. What do you think was the impact of Peace Corps service?

Rowland Bennett: Well, I think Peace Corps, without a doubt, was for me the most important single commitment that I made in my life. It was fundamental to adjusting my values, to being open to others and the way of life of others. I consider myself to be a tolerant person who also is in touch with the stresses and strains that you might feel when you're in a difficult situation or a situation where you're around people who are, quote, different.

Robert Klein: Yeah, yeah.

Rowland Bennett: But my heart is open to caring about all kinds of people and trying to understand who they are and what they are. Now let's bring and show them that I appreciate who they are and what they are. Let's bring this to my work. I'm a librarian. I've been a public librarian. But about 15 years ago, I got a part time job at Rutgers-Newark Library.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: Filling in their schedule, nights and weekends basically when the regular staff are not there. And I love this work. But the thing about Rutgers-Newark is, uh, it is the most diverse campus in the United States.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: It's more than half white. So I'm not talking about the traditional Negro college type thing, but where you have a basically a white campus with other diversity.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: It's up there in the 40 percent. So I see kids from all over the world. They may be doing foreign study, graduate study. They may be immigrants' children.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And I feel that my Peace Corps experience has enabled me to be very effective with that type of library clientele.

Robert Klein: So it sort of stuck with you, I mean, it was back in the '60s and it just becomes part of your, your life.

Rowland Bennett: It's become part of me, yeah. I would say and I like to say to people that are thinking about joining the Peace Corps, it's equivalent to another college education in terms of what you learn and how you, one's self can be enlarged by that experience.

Robert Klein: Good.

Rowland Bennett: Do a lot of reading. I like to read about the British Empire.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: I like to read about third world countries, particularly Peace Corps experiences, and there's been some wonderful Peace Corps writers.

Robert Klein: Yes. Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And maybe if you can't go, reading some of those experiential books is about as close as you can get.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Anything else for the archives, I mean?

Rowland Bennett: For the archives.

Robert Klein: We can, we can. We can stop.

Rowland Bennett: Uh, I want to say something about the impact of the Peace Corps.

Robert Klein: Sure.

Rowland Bennett: The Peace Corps has done a tremendous amount of goodwill for the United States. The other day I read in the paper that it's costing us approximately $300,000 per individual that's in Iraq right now. We're talking about military and nonmilitary.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And that's not even accounting for all costs.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: A Peace Corps person in the field is under $20,000 a year. There's 7,000 some 100 Peace Corps volunteers abroad right now.

Robert Klein: Right.

Rowland Bennett: And I think that small group and that small expenditure of under $300 million currently Peace Corps budget is doing far more good for the United States worldwide than our military adventures of late.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Rowland Bennett: And it has been for the United States a wonderful PR benefit, to say nothing about whatever new ideas and enlargement of view and vision of people that we've come to know in the countries where we served.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Good.

Rowland Bennett: So it's deeply meaningful to me.

Robert Klein: Good.