Robert T. K. Scully Oral History Interview
Interviewer(s): Wendy McLaughlin
Interviewee(s): Robert T. K. Scully

Robert T. K. Scully: Middle of the tape recording and talking.

Wendy McLaughlin: Today is March the 22nd. This is Wendy McLaughlin interviewing Robert T.K. Scully, also known as Bob Scully.

Robert T. K. Scully: Yes.

Wendy McLaughlin: In Atlanta, Georgia. And so I'm just going to kind of go into the questions, Bob, and just feel comfortable to elaborate. And I always like to really start out the interview asking interviewees about their present family, their work, where they reside, what some of their interests are.

Robert T. K. Scully: Sure. Well, Wendy, I want to thank you for doing this project for so many years. I think it's very important that these histories of these early volunteers in particular somehow gets recorded because many of these people, myself included, were entering in some ways unknown territory. In many cases, we were the first American in an area and in my case welcomed with open arms. And it was kind of a relief after the British regime in Kenya.

Wendy McLaughlin: So if you could speak a little bit about your present family and where you reside and some of your interests. What do you do?

Robert T. K. Scully: Well, Wendy, I recently retired about four years ago. I'm a medical anthropologist, an anthropologist with a medical subset. And for the last, oh, eighteen years or so, I worked for an international health organization, Medical Assistance Programs International, MAP International, and its head office is down in Brunswick, Georgia, although I moved it up here in Atlanta to be closer to the Center for Disease Control and other major health agencies, profit and not for profit, but tend to cluster around the Center for Disease Control. And so Emory University and so many important facilities.

We were in Brunswick and it was a 50 year old organization, year old organization when I joined it, because its main function for many, many years, much of the 50 years, was to procure medicines from pharmaceutical companies here in America, long dated good medicines that were not, were not going to be sold, and then export them to developing countries where there were need for medicines. And also equipped and supplied medical mission teams, usually religious based in some way, but not necessarily. Did a lot of Rotary work and Kiwanian work and other work. But the biggest audience was in the early days the church and faith-based organizations sent out medical staff to work in one place or another. And we supplied the medicines for these clinics and hospitals and short-term missions, whatever it was that they were doing.

I came into the organization after it had been expanded its work considerably. My job as an anthropologist, I was hired by Larry Dixon, who was a long-term president of the organization, to make the organization more compatible with the people it served. The feeling was that an anthropologist would be an appropriate person to work with the organization here in this country and its satellite agencies around the world and summers and so on. And it was a challenging job. But the MAP emerged out of the evangelical Christian tradition, which was not my tradition. And so it was kind of an interesting cultural experience for me as well, to get to know the, the historic personages.

Many of the projects in Africa and particular Latin America as well, which were the two main areas, although there was considerable work in Eastern Europe at the time. Very little in Asia at the time. But many of the staff people were seconded American missionary workers, quite often physicians, nurses, etcetera, seconded from some church-based organization already in a particular country. And they worked at a cut rate in some cases for MAP International. So there was a touching post there that could supervise, do whatever was needed or administered, particularly the medicines that went in and so on and were dispersed throughout the countries.

And so I came in to be a catalyst and hopefully a guiding source for how this organization could be more indicative of the people who serve both in terms of ethnic background or gender background and so on, and reconstituting the organization here, the home organization in terms of its leadership composition, etcetera. And that was a big, that was a big step. And there I went for many, many years. Got very involved in my last years in the HIV AIDS awareness, prevention, and treatment program, and basically left with that as my main, my main project focus, although my primary job of that was to raise money, grant money, federal government money, and private donations of various types. Private foundations, public foundations, government, family, whatever, and sustain and expand these programs.

So I worked very extensively with USAID and so on and so forth. Got the first, some really interesting firsts for us, particularly in the AIDS area, particularly working with a niche, the faith-based leadership of a number of African countries. And then we contextualized lessons learned in Africa, starting in Honduras, and then spread out in Central and then South America. So very, very fascinating work.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: Previous to that, I had worked in university administration in North Carolina, in Minnesota, and various other places, usually in the fundraising and granting field. Before that, I was the ethnographer and the professor at a college, private college and museum. The Yager Museum in Oneonta, New York. And that's what got me into this whole new work, both financial development and also health development. My, my expertise, my area of expertise in the area was community based health programing. And it is, how do you get the communities being served to basically take charge of their own health?

Wendy McLaughlin: Mm hmm.

Robert T. K. Scully: Or if you don't have to treat people, this is the way you get a healthier community. Some communities as we know now, but didn't 20 years ago necessarily, really have to buy into a program point to succeed. It cannot be something taken from outside or implanted in them and expect it to succeed. Well, that's, that's kind of a little nutshell.

Wendy McLaughlin: Very, very rich.

Robert T. K. Scully: [coughs] Forgive me.

Wendy McLaughlin: Well, so, um. When I take you back to the year before you joined Peace Corps.

Robert T. K. Scully: Mm hmm.

Wendy McLaughlin: And actually, I should mention on the tape that Bob was in Kenya between October 1964 to December 1966. So if you could think back to 1963 or roughly about a year before you joined Peace Corps and talk a little bit about your life. You know, what you were doing at that time?

Robert T. K. Scully: I was an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. I'm sorry, University of Missouri. And I have Minnesota connections as well. And was wrapping up an undergraduate degree in history with a couple of minors. I lived at a co-op on campus, something like a fraternity, but it wasn't a fraternity. It was a basically inexpensive housing, good but inexpensive housing, with other men. One of the people staying there was a fellow named Douglas Odalla, who was an engineering student, a graduate student. And there were quite a few overseas students living in the facility, a number from China. There was the one African.

And Douglas and I seemed to gravitate toward one another and have our meals together and tea and so on when we had a chance. And I always found him a fascinating person, who was a bit older, a married man with several children back in Kenya. I didn't have enough information to know this at the time, but the name Odalla is a Luo name. You may have heard another similar Luo name, Obama maybe? Has that come across your desk?

Wendy McLaughlin: I think I've heard of him.

Robert T. K. Scully: Years later, a Kenyan colleague of mine, someone working at MAP International, Undungay Keating, came in. We were, there was this young new senator from Chicago, Odalla, oh, Obama. And I still remember laughing and I said, wouldn't it be something if he became the first Luo president of the United States? And he laughed because when you hear, you know, Obama, Odalla, Odinga, you know, all of these names, immediately it's Luo, it's Lake Victoria. So we always had a chuckle over that. And what do you know, our first Luo president.

Wendy McLaughlin: Well, so the year before you were living in the co-op and?

Robert T. K. Scully: Yes, and Douglas and I became friends and I had started undergrad, some studies at the law school, the Missouri Law School at the time, thinking I might go on to legal studies. And you could do some of them as electives, sort of accelerate your program that way. And so I was planning to basically go on to law school. There was a Peace Corps recruitment group that came into the University of Missouri, and I went to the meeting and signed something not seriously really thinking that I'd be doing anything like that. And I got some kind of a follow up saying, well, you know, why don't you sign up and see what happens?

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And I did. And I left anywhere in the world's fine. It would be a nice break for me. I'm tired of studying and maybe a two year break would be great. And my intention was not really thinking I'd be selected for Peace Corps.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And, uh, you know, a couple of months later, it was summer, I was doing the finals. Final courses and credits in the summer to finish my degree.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: An AB in history. And I got the letter from the Peace Corps, you have been selected to go to Kenya.

Wendy McLaughlin: Wow.

Robert T. K. Scully: And Douglas Odalla happened to be on that summer, and I showed him the letter, he was the first one to look at it, and he hugged me and kissed me and jumped around and said, of course you're going, aren't you? I said, well, I don't know yet. I have to think about this, you know?

Wendy McLaughlin: So you don't remember, there wasn't a long? There wasn't a long application process for you back then?

Robert T. K. Scully: I did a paper application. I may have done an interview, which I don't recall now, but there was nothing more than that, as best I know. And, you know, so I was. The question was yes or no, you are in?

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: So Douglas wouldn't take no for an answer. He said, you've got to go to Kenya, you'll love it. And he really made me rather excited about the whole idea.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: [coughs] Sorry.

Wendy McLaughlin: That's okay.

Robert T. K. Scully: So Douglas Odalla was kind of my motivator to look into it. So I, of course, had to find out where Kenya was and get some basics about Kenya. I had read a book by Tom Mboya, who had been a Kenyan student who came to America to study, either undergraduate or graduate studies. I forgot which now. And so I did kind of have a Kenyan in my mind at the time. Basically, Africa was Tom Mboya and a few others. I did have a relative on my mother's side who had lived in North Africa for a number of years. And I had been in touch with that relative off and on, had worked at a hospital in Tangier, but had been elsewhere in North Africa. So there was kind of an Africa connect. I knew there were people, at least in the family, who had been there and that had been talked about a little bit.

But that was about the extent of my exposure, except in anthropology studies and working as an undergraduate. So lo and behold, I kind of said yes. I packed up, left Missouri, went back to my home in New York. I grew up in a place called Suffern, New York, a small town about 30, 40 miles outside of New York City.

Wendy McLaughlin: Suffern?

Robert T. K. Scully: S-U-F-F-E-R-N, Suffern, New York. Old Revolutionary War carriage stop in the Ramapo Mountains, but part of the greater river and mountain area of old Dutch New York. And from the top of the Ramapos you could see the Empire State Building on a clear day. It was, but it was pretty far out there, and it was a different world. It was very rural, a small town, it was not an urban area when I grew up. It was horse country, basically. And we had horses.

Wendy McLaughlin: The Appalachian Trail doesn't go through there?

Robert T. K. Scully: Not that I can recall, it might possibly on the west side of it, you know. And so small town living. And I did have a lot of rural exposure. We kept horses, stabled horses at a nearby farm, and I was there every day. And so we had a good, you know, kind of small town or country background, went to small town schools and that sort of thing, the local high school. And then off to Missouri with a couple of stops along the way. And, uh, you know, I sometimes think it was the small town and rural that kind of helped me adapt to my Kenyan assignment when I got there, which was remote.

So we went into training at Columbia University. It was people from all over the country. We were part of the TC, the Teachers College, Columbia, because we were going as teachers. And it was a pretty good intensive cross-cultural study program. We had one day a week, maybe two days a week of Swahili language. About the first week into training, we stayed at the Paris Hotel, which is no longer there, up on the riverside up there, not far from Columbia. We caught the subway every day and went up to Columbia University and went back. There was Riverside Park was nearby Columbia. And there was a guy named Danson Mina was the teacher. I'll never forget him.

But the first week we were there, we were, the people that came in from the old TEEA, I think was, Teachers for East Africa. We were replacing them, displacing them and replacing them. It was a British and U.S. group of teachers who had probably for about ten years before gone and helped in secondary schools. They did their training at Makerere University in Uganda, and then they were kind of spread out on assignment around East Africa, Kenya, Tanzania. The Peace Corps was taking over that program. There was a little, I think, a little sadness, shall we say, between the groups, because they were there when we came in, the Brits and the American TEEAers. I, incidentally, belong to the TEA alumni group, and I get their email. It is a very well organized.

Wendy McLaughlin: Now?

Robert T. K. Scully: Right now. Very well organized. They're still in touch with their schools. They raise money. They go back and visit and review the curriculum. They're very active, this previous group, this older group. They did their graduate degrees at Makerere. They've kept the nice together. I've enjoyed, in fact, I helped put together at the Carter Center a couple of years ago their biannual meeting, and we recruited people from the community to give workshops and talk. And so I was very impressed with the group. The Peace Corps group has not done that. The friends of groups, Friends of Kenya has. In fact, I was president of Friends of Kenya for a couple of years. And it's, you know, it's a kind of a loose jointed. We had a newspaper. There is a newspaper, web page, but it's nothing like this other of group I must say. They're very, they've been very effectively organized and keep the information flowing.

So there I was at Columbia. First week we had a lot of TEAers come in as kind of, we've been there, we can share with you.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: Almost the first message was forget about language. Everything's in English. In fact, students are penalized if they use anything but English at the schools because it's an English media school. You've got to learn English. And I swear, the motivation for learning a language dropped completely. Well, guess what? It really made a difference knowing, knowing Swahili and, uh, and of course, the vernacular of the area which spoke. People use Swahili everywhere. English was still the language of the literati. The people who had had an opportunity to go to school. The vast community could communicate rudimentary in Swahili. The English was, was taking hold, of course. It had been an English colony, as you know.

And so but that was, that was a kind of a surprise when I got there. And the guy who did my household workings and that sort of thing, laundry, cooking, and hauling water and this.

Wendy McLaughlin: Guy?

Robert T. K. Scully: Yeah, my guy named Baraza, who became a good friend of mine, but I mean, he spoke not a word of English, and his main language was Lubukusu, which of course, I did a double take on that, you know. And so we worked with Swahili and some Lubukusu, as I learned it. He knew all the words for foods in English, but not much more. And I was happy to learn Swahili. So I didn't push the English because I thought, well, look, if I'm ever going to pick this language up, it better start at home.

Wendy McLaughlin: Sure.

Robert T. K. Scully: And then we, you know, we did very intensive work. We built, we kind of built rapport with one another. And we became a support group. And most of us have a very fond feeling of one another even today. We've had a couple of reunions and.

Wendy McLaughlin: How large was your group?

Robert T. K. Scully: Oh, probably about maybe 120 or so. We were going to three countries.

Wendy McLaughlin: Well, but the people that trained with you at Columbia?

Robert T. K. Scully: About 120, maybe a hundred.

Wendy McLaughlin: That's huge.

Robert T. K. Scully: Was it?

Wendy McLaughlin: That is a huge group.

Robert T. K. Scully: Maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong about that. Let me think. 30, 60, maybe about 90.

Wendy McLaughlin: It could have been that way back then. I mean, they've changed.

Robert T. K. Scully: I'm thinking about 30 went to each of the countries.

Wendy McLaughlin: Okay, that sounds about normal, right.

Robert T. K. Scully: Maybe 25 to each country, so maybe 75 to 100.

Wendy McLaughlin: But you trained, obviously, at Columbia with people that were going to three different countries.

Robert T. K. Scully: Yes, yes.

Wendy McLaughlin: Okay. So that's, that's very unique.

Robert T. K. Scully: And the curriculum was East Africa and the TEA program was Teachers for East Africa. So they were basically all the stuff, all the professional stuff, were on the faculty of that program. So they were transitioning to a different kind of crowd as well.

Wendy McLaughlin: Besides obviously the curriculum and the teachers portion of what you were going to be doing in Kenya, what else did you do in training?

Robert T. K. Scully: We did cross country studies. We did education studies. And although I didn't do this, we could take final exams and get a certificate of some type for education, sort of a, not a master's. I don't think it was a master's, but it was an advanced certificate, possibly could have been led to a master's with some additional coursework. We did the language study. And we had sort of a P.T. or physical exercise type of once or twice a week where we had East African type games explained to us and we went out and we'd practice soccer and that sort of thing.

Wendy McLaughlin: Cool. So that was kind of the cultural piece to make sure you could fit in?

Robert T. K. Scully: Yeah, that was basically it. Yes. We, we met with people and then we did a training in schools in New York City. And I was assigned to the Charles. [coughs] [tape break]

Wendy McLaughlin: So we were just talking a little bit about the training that you had prior to going to Kenya. Anything else notable that you want to share?

Robert T. K. Scully: Well, it was a very good experience at Columbia. The teaching experience in the public school system was very good. I went to Charles Evans Hughes High School, which was a bit of a, I guess maybe inner-city school with a pretty diverse student population.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And I thought that gave me a good kind of practice in putting together lesson plans and so on. Of course, I discovered when I got to Kenya that there's an awful lot of lesson plans go into running a system for a whole year and so on. But it was a good experience. A kind of funny thing. I had some discipline issues there and it kind of discouraged me. And I was saying to myself, golly, this is the center of Western civilization, New York City. And the motivation of some of the students were very disappointing and so on and so forth. People didn't do their assignment. I was taught there for about three weeks and I had assignments and basically substitute for a teacher.

And I started saying to myself, holy mackerel, I'm going off to the a remote, rural part of Africa. These are urban, civilized, in theory. What's it going to be like there? I don't know. I mean, I'm having enough trouble dealing with the children here, you know, how am I going to deal with them over there? I have my doubts.

Wendy McLaughlin: Sure.

Robert T. K. Scully: So, you know, I talked to some of the people who were still in the program, who taught in Kenya and had come back. And they reassured me that the students are very motivated in Africa, there's a hunger for education and that I'd find it very different. And that kind of gave me a little more confidence. And with that, we basically had our selection process, several selection processes. These were kind of nerve wracking.

Wendy McLaughlin: Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Robert T. K. Scully: Well, you know, we had a whole series of psychological interviews and tests and things and you never quite knew what it was all about. But there was a strong, this was a first group going into a new independent country. Kenya had just become independent, and they were clearly planning to change the programs and bring in new resources. And the State Department and the White House had, of course, taken this on and were establishing good ties with the new government and so on. So we were kind of the first group to go. And I guess there was a real concern that nobody fall on their face and causing embarrassment. So I guess they were being particularly scrupulous about, about who got in and who didn't.

And there were some wonderful, wonderful people, trainees who were deselected. And there were several of these selection periods, at least two, maybe three. And everybody was nervous. And these people you were having a wonderful time with were gone and not a word. They just basically vanished. And that was a little bit, you know, kind of disappointing. And you missed them. You felt sorry. And there was a tension about convoy, I'm putting all this time in and I really want to make this work. But what if I'm just deselected for some reason?

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And we had a big reunion, oh, maybe three, four years ago. My wife Jennifer was with me. And several of the people who were deselected were there. And they had, it was still a meaningful experience of them in the training.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And some of them, it was in the D.C. area. But I remember having a chat with a fellow I hadn't seen in 50 years almost.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And we had been friends. We probably, you know, had nearby rooms in the hotel and had had dinners together and. But there he was, married, children.

Wendy McLaughlin: Did he know why he was deselected?

Robert T. K. Scully: I don't think he ever really. They didn't talk about it a whole lot. Possibly for some psychological reasons or emotional reasons. I think they were taking absolutely no risks.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And quite honestly, I wasn't sure whether I was, uh, what they were looking for. [coughs] We were talking about training.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah, there was something, I wanted to go back for a moment. Well, actually, a couple of things if you could address. This is more relevant to what you were just talking about with the training. What were you going to be teaching in Kenya? What was the subjects or the range of subjects that you were going to teaching?

Robert T. K. Scully: Um, I didn't know when I was in training, nor did I know until I got to Kenya. I had no idea where I would be going, what subjects I might be training. So we were kind of, the curriculum was shared with us. We were prepared though. They said, be ready, be flexible, because there may be a need at your school that you weren't, that you weren't thinking of. So expect to teach subjects roughly in your field possibly, but you might be expected to do physical education and others. And that you will have a lot of administrative responsibility as well, which was the case.

So I went in, got my assignment several days after I got to Nairobi. They were still sorting them out when we got there, apparently. And then we, we kind of got the notices and everybody compared notes. And there were three of us, actually, two women and I going to western Kenya into the Nyanza area, which is north of Lake Rudolf [now Lake Turkana], in the mountains near Mount Elgon. And the two women were sent to a school about, oh, 20 miles as the crow flies from where I was. They were both Catholic mission schools. Mine was run by a group of Dutch monks basically from Utrecht, and they had been there three or four years before, and this was the first year that was going to prepare for the Cambridge exams. So they were a little uneasy.

I guess they requested an English speaking, none of them had English as a second language, and they were a little nervous about the Cambridge and getting this first year through. So they were very happy that I got that. The women went to Misikhu, which was run by a group of Dutch Ursuline nuns, and so we had some commonality and we had some great swapping of stories and things about adjusting to the Dutch Catholic missions and so on. So we, we basically met in Kisumu, where the train let us off. The nuns and the brothers came down to greet us separately, and we took off in different directions and said bye bye. But the priests that ran these missions were a different Catholic society. Mill Hill is the name of it, and there's an interesting history to it, I won't take up time on now, why it was that they came into that area. There had been a lot of sectarian strife in the area over the generations.

And so I was assigned to the secondary school, three years in the running. This will be the final graduation sitting for Cambridge year. And that was my assignment. Prepare these kids to take the English Cambridge exam. Without it, you could not progress to higher education. And students hadn't arrived yet. There had been some head, uh, they were in their three, three and one half week vacation, interim term vacation. All students were gone. So I got there. So I had a little breathing spell. And the brothers quickly oriented me and they had had meetings with a Peace Corps representative ahead of time. That was it. And they were invited. There were four brothers at the school and two African teachers, two Luo actually from down along Lake Victoria, and that was the staff, the faculty.

And they all sat around and could ask the Peace Corps representative what it would be like to have a Peace Corps teacher. The one thing they warned, particularly the European missionaries, the expats, you know, was you have to be careful about these American Peace Corps volunteers. They tend to go native, and this was a big cultural breach at the time. You stayed on your compound and you maintained your status as both as an expat but also as the local indigenous teachers as well. You were a distinct entity and you had to maintain your status.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And so they had been warned. And the first term at least the headmaster kind of kept a pretty heavy hand on me. Now don't you go, you know, you stay, you've got work to do here and don't go mixing out there too much with the people, you know. And I accepted that, thought, hey, I'm here to do the job and that's he's the boss and so. On the second term, there was one of the monks, a Brother Martino, had a lot of energy and he wanted to get out and do stuff. The priests had mission stations. [tape break]

Wendy McLaughlin: Okay, go ahead.

Robert T. K. Scully: Well, so in a sense, we were a little bit restricted to the school compound, which is a boarding school for men, and all Catholics that I knew of. They had the niche on Catholic higher education there. And the young priest was on a one year assignment to, uh, he had finished a PhD in the Netherlands and he would go out in his little Volkswagen to these mission stations, do a Catholic mass. And so I saw this as a wonderful opportunity to get out of this school compound. So I went. Now I come from a Roman Catholic background, and I had gone to a little convent school in the town for grade school. And then other than that had a completely secondary education. But my roots were Catholic and I was familiar with the basic theology and the practices. So, and that was another thing the brothers were uncomfortable about.

I don't think they had any idea what I might be, but they had heard that these Americans could be a problem in terms of religion and, you know, all kinds of warnings ahead of time. And they, scandal was not something a mission wanted. And these young Americans coming in were the unknown ingredient here in the future. But Peace Corps assured them that we were solid people and we'd been carefully selected. So I had the only degree at the institution and the stature of the institution reflected my degree, among other things. So I was a very important of this. And they had a lot invested in this.

So anyway, but I got a chance then to get out into the bush. And as I did this, week after week, I would meet the parents of my students. Of course, first term over the parents came in, I would meet them. So I started making plans very quickly with the local people and my cook, Baraza, of course, was giving me a crash course on Lubukusu, the local vernacular, you know. So you'd try, at least I was getting some vocabulary. And I made friends on the, on the rather big mission compound. I lived in a house separate from the school compound on what was the church mission property. And there was a territorialism going on. The school technically belonged to the mission, but it was state funded and so on. So there was some ambiguities and the missionaries were afraid with independence and the new governor of possibly losing some of their real estate.

So I was kind of a token school entity on the mission compound to keep possession of that house one way or the other. And I don't know all the, it was never quite shared to me, nor did they necessarily know exactly, but they were being very, very careful and conservative about this. So I lived off on my own, which was kind of nice, separated from the priests by a banana grove and mulberry trees and all kinds of great stuff. And I had a big, big, big acres of grass around me and a little garden and all the same thing. But I mean, I could, in a sense I was almost isolated. I wasn't aware of the European compound or any of that.

There was a Roman Catholic African Sisters primary school with six or seven, uh, Lubukusu and Luo nuns from Kakamega, which is south of where we were, and they didn't wait very long to introduce them to me. They came knocking at my door the first morning I was there with a cake they had baked for me and introduced themselves and welcomed me and they were just charming. And I many a time had lunch in their little guest dining room after that because their cooking was outstanding and they ran this marvelous primary school. And I got to know the lay teachers as well. And I had a historic first. I had a party at my house for all the lay teachers, and they were all African. And we played African music and we danced and we, you know, oh, they just loved it.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: Well, this was a bit of a culture shock for the, for the staff of the secondary school. And, uh, at first they didn't come. I had another one. And the monks came as well. They came not with the robes on or things, but then we sat and we had a great time. So they, they began to integrate a little bit more with the local people on a social level as well as in an official capacity. So I was kind of a, oh, kind of a, you know, a catalyst for change of a sort. And it was kind of fun. It was really a lot of fun. And the music was fun and I was young and they were all young. And, and you learn, you learned a lot that way. But I was still within the confines of this sectarian institution. And, and that was good I think. I conformed as much as possible.

I, uh, they didn't give me any religious responsibilities, which was okay with me. I did have to conduct assemblies in the morning, every morning we had an assembly. I did say prayers. Everything began with a prayer and ended with a prayer, I think by government preference. And religion was taught in the state schools. And I walked the boys, as we called them, a number of them were much older than I was, and I walked them over from the school compound to the mission compound to the church where they would have once or twice a week a devotional service. And I quite often stayed for it. And we all chatted after it was over. There was a little break and people could socialize and so on. And there were a lot of local ordinary people there as well. The church bell would ring and people would come in. And so it became a social a way to meet people and practice your language and so on and so forth. And the students had a chance to meet girls from [inaudible]. So it was very nice.

Wendy McLaughlin: Was this, um, the students that you had, was it mandatory that they came into the school or was it, um, did their parents have to pay tuition or something?

Robert T. K. Scully: Yeah, there were school theses where they were selected in and not everybody had the chance to go to school. Primary education seemed to be becoming universal, boys more than girls at that time. Today, I think you find that completely corrected for. But, if you wanted to get on to secondary school, you had to pass exams and you had to reach a certain level of proficiency and then you were a candidate for secondary school. And then the various denominations had their denominational schools and they had a right to select people of their denomination. So we got a lot of Catholic candidates. [coughs]

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: So, and of course, coming from a, a system where state and church is separated and having a combination of government school with missionary curriculum and so on, and basically the, the say in what kind of religion was taught there was kind of interesting. We had, I basically was very flexible, was very compatible. There was a little bit of tension between the, the Dutch staff, the Dutch Catholic people and myself. And I, and it revolved around notions of Catholicism and so on, because they're pretty open ended about chatting about things. But I think they wanted to hear their line affirmed. And I didn't always do that.

The young priest, a PhD, and I got along much better. Could talk pretty widely about the Catholic Church, which was in an enormous transformation at the time. It had just had a major revamp or it was underway at the time, dropping the, uh, the sacred language, liberating religious women. While I was there, the Ursuline nuns removed their habits, their long white veils and the whole thing. And they wore, you know, attractive dresses and looked, you know, fairly normal. They fit right in. Well, not quite with the African population, but they looked like Europeans, secular Europeans. So it was a big time for the church. And I think maybe that was reflected in my relationship. As a birthright Catholic, I was all for change.

Wendy McLaughlin: Hmm.

Robert T. K. Scully: The sooner the better. And the biggest interest I had was dropping celibacy.

Wendy McLaughlin: Sure.

Robert T. K. Scully: So but that would have been considered very liberal, probably, at the time. Well, you know, what did I care? But I had to be respectful of, of the sensitivities of the groups. And within that little, little enclave of Europeans, there was a wide range of opinion about it. Now, the pastor of the church was an old Dutch Navy guy who fought in the Second World War, had been captured by the Nazis, had been left for dead in front of a firing squad. And if I can be kind of bland about it, got God after that, and he became a priest. And I'll tell you, this guy was something else.

We had some political issues in the area. A group, well, number one, independence had come. British out, you know. In many cases there was quite a bit of dislike for the colonial overlords in that area where I was. There had been some nasty history. There had been floggings of heads of families. I don't have all the details to it or cared to take the time now. So in one way I was a new, a breath of something new coming in, but I was white. And for all practical purposes, I was British. I looked British and I spoke English. And, you know, so there was this kind of ambiguity. And some of my students were very bitter about how their parents have been treated by the British. And I learned that as I progressed through my Peace Corps time and so on. Um.

So it was, it was a great adaptation. I thrived in the area, I loved the area of the Mount Elgon, the third highest mountain in East Africa, was glorious at all times. And I very quickly adapted into a way of life which I enjoyed immensely. I was very lonely. I had contemplative monastics as my social group and two African teachers and their families. And at first there was a little suggestion that I shouldn't mix too much, on the part of the Europeans. I'm an expat. Stick with the expats. I quickly dropped that because I had no choice. They came over to visit me.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And they brought beer, they brought baked goods. And we sat and we had great times together and we all became good friends. And then I realized there was a definite divide between the secular and the sacred here.

Wendy McLaughlin: Sure.

Robert T. K. Scully: The monks were cloistered. And that's going to have an impact not only on the local community, but on the students as well.

Wendy McLaughlin: Sure.

Robert T. K. Scully: How comfortable you interact with so on. But three of the monks are quite young yet, they were all in their thirties. So they were, they kind of were with it, but they had their own cultural baggage and their restrictions and so on. And they had a, let me use nice language, a real pisser of a bishop.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: This is a Dutchman, Bishop Draper, and I'll tell you, he had people on their, and if he was coming everybody was uptight. So, you know, that was part of the subculture within which I worked. Then very quickly I discovered there was a whole world out there with complex rules and regulations and expectations and so on, called the Lubukusu people. And I learned that there was a hereditary ruler by the name of Chief Sudi. I learned that his first son, his heir apparent, had decided not to be chief, not to be political head of this entity, this large population. And he went into the priesthood, and he was the youngest Catholic bishop at the time, stationed in Nairobi.

But that was home, where I was. And within about two weeks, I had a bishop knocking at my door with some refreshments for me and so on. And he'd been to America and he wanted to meet the American, first American out there. And Bishop Maurice Otunga and I became lifelong friends. He later became the cardinal archbishop of Nairobi.

And I'll put a footnote, it has nothing to do with Peace Corps. When I was working in and out of Nairobi for MAP International, I initiated an AIDS initiative, and it was faith-based leadership. Well, you know what? Guess who my buddy was. We corresponded over the years. We weren't, but I was in town. I let him know I was there. I had an audience with His Eminence, the Cardinal. I gave him all the materials we were developing. It had lots of scripture in it. Lots of, you know, things would make a religious leader comfortable dealing with an issue that they were not comfortable with.

Wendy McLaughlin: How many years later was that?

Robert T. K. Scully: This was back in, uh, '93.

Wendy McLaughlin: Wow. So that was.

Robert T. K. Scully: Quite a while.

Wendy McLaughlin: 30 years after your Peace Corps service.

Robert T. K. Scully: Yes, yes. There I am sitting with this handsome young guy who appeared at my door about two weeks into my Peace Corps service, shook my hand and warm, wouldn't let me kneel down. I wasn't sure how to behave. He had, he had the stuff on, you know, he had his cross on.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And I knew something was going on and I knew this was important. And he is a significant leader of that community. He later, he carried the ivory bracelet of peace with him that came from his father and his ancestors. And there was an awesome, sacred responsibility of a tribal nature as well. So I began to learn a little bit more about the greater world, the bigger circle around which surrounded me and so on. And then I found out the old sea captain, who had been shot and left dead by the Nazis, used to make trips over to Uganda, to Tororo hill, huge volcanic megaliths sticking out. You could see it on clear days from the school compound just over the Uganda border. We were right on the border.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And he'd go to buy supplies for the mission. Well, by golly, you know, I wanted to do as much traveling as I could, so I'd hitch a ride with him. Oh, he loved talking. He talked for, he talked forever with me. And he was just the greatest guy. And I got to like him very much.

Wendy McLaughlin: Do you remember his name?

Robert T. K. Scully: His name was Father Valstra. V-A-L-S-T-R-A, Father Valstra. The W pronounces as a V. The other priest was Father Kris. Sorry, sorry, Father Klapper, Klipis, Klaper, Koipus. Dutch for Cooper, the English Cooper. And they turned out to be just charming guys. They loved to drink beer. And I began to drink beer while I was there. It's not a custom I've continued, but for the time. Well, the day I arrived in my house from the monks guest cottage, an old, old monk, father, Brother Pacificus, big, chubby old monk, came over with the school car and lugged in a six pack of Tusker beer and put it on my dining room table. And he said, yeah, Mr. Scully, you'll be drinking a lot of this here, you know. And I thanked Brother Pacificus and, you know.

Wendy McLaughlin: Wasn't that considered a sin to be?

Robert T. K. Scully: No, not among the Catholics.

Wendy McLaughlin: Okay.

Robert T. K. Scully: But therein was a sectarian issue because north of the Baptists, or north of the Catholics rather, were the, were the Quakers and they were teetotalers. It was a teetotaling English Quaker tradition. And I won't get into the history, but the drinking is what determined who became Catholic and who didn't become Catholic. Chief Sudi, the ruler, and all of Lubukusu tradition involves good beer. You don't have a marriage, you don't have a funeral, you have a birth, you don't have anything without beer. And that the Dutch priests partook of everything was a plus for them in terms of, of rapport with the local population. And the chief decided that, well, that boy then would become a Catholic priest, not a Quaker minister or whatever, or a Baptist minister or Anglican or whatever else.

So it was a very complicated social mosaic that I had very few guidelines for or rules for. And you had to kind of feel the elephant to find out where the trunk was, where the tail was, and so on. And but that was part of the Peace Corps experience. And by golly, I was going to do it.

Wendy McLaughlin: Sure.

Robert T. K. Scully: And make friends. And not be lonely. And I think that was the success that came out of it. But I'll move the, I'll move the film ahead a little bit. The brothers were a nervous wreck about this Cambridge exam. There had been a mini riot at the school when they heard an American was coming to take over the Cambridge courses because it was rumored that Americans didn't really speak English. And this is a very Cambridge Anglo-focused tradition at the time. The exams were set in Cambridge. They were brought to Kenya carefully and monitored under security and then taken back to Cambridge for correction and grading.

Wendy McLaughlin: Wow.

Robert T. K. Scully: And then you got the grades several months later, posted all over the country and in the newspapers, by name. So you knew who passed and who didn't and how badly and how well. So this was a big pressure on the school. They'd never had a class and some of the more established schools looked down on them, didn't take them seriously. And a number of schools had very poor records of early classes. So they were kind of nervous. If they didn't do well, would they be thrown out? You know, there were all kinds of political implications here.

Wendy McLaughlin: What would passing the Cambridge exam afford these students?

Robert T. K. Scully: Entry way into higher education. Without the GCE, the General Cambridge Exam, you could not go on to university. You could not go on to teacher training colleges of a degree level, and many other things. And therein rested a, a true cleavage between the American educator, quote unquote, who had done two months of teaching half seriously at Columbia University. But I sure glad I did it when I got there. And the establishment and the Dutch. None of the Dutch brothers who ran the school had any kind of degree. They did teachers training courses in the Netherlands to teach grade school, and they were all the victims and casualties of the war. So they all lived through the occupation. They didn't have a lot of advantages and the country was just emerging still from war-torn Europe.

Wendy McLaughlin: The Teachers for East Africa, the TEA, were they British?

Robert T. K. Scully: Some were British, some were American. It was a very interesting program and they mingled and mixed quite well. But the British tended to be located at certain schools, the Americans at certain others. So there was a bit of a divvying out there by origin. But I was there. I was the first. And the Dutch were, number one, they were very uncomfortable about their language, a very accented English. Two of the monks couldn't speak English. I had to teach them English. They were hoping I would teach them. The one brother teacher with the worst English taught sciences, and he literally every night in the wee hours, copied every word of his lesson for the next day and then read it.

Now, that man is a giant in my esteem at this point. I still think of him terribly fondly. He later, he learned English with me and improved his, he had good English, good command of English, and couldn't speak well. And, uh, and he was nervous and he was insecure about this. And but the students knew less than he did so. But the punchline of all of this, the good news is, we had the highest passes in the province at the end of it. And guess what happened? Halfway through my year, they changed the format of the curriculum. Multiple choice were being introduced for the first time. People were screaming and angry about it. I quick wrote a letter to my mother.

See, I did my high school education in New York State. I had to sit for the U.S. State Regents exams and it was all multiple choice and there were all kinds of prep books. I wrote home. I told my mother, mother, get the new, collect at the high schools, where can you get these New York Regents exam books, English, world history, and there was another one I wanted. Uh, I think, I've forgotten the book. Anyway, she sent truckloads, they're all paperback things with mark ups, kids used it. And they just send the word out. This first American needs help. And they came in and we crammed multiple questions and answers. You know, if you have four choices, don't leave it blank. Take one of them.

Wendy McLaughlin: Right.

Robert T. K. Scully: You know, it's very basic things. But also, as the popular mythology at the time suggested, your first choice might be the best one. So if you feel comfortable or choose the first choice and stick with it. So those were some of. But we were able to review and review and review how to answer types of English language questions with short answers and picking up, the answer's there, you just have to learn to.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And we worked and we worked and day and night we worked on this because, by golly, I wasn't going to have these, quote unquote, bloody Brits looking down at me. And they did. Oh boy, did they. I wouldn't have said this then and felt comfortable about it, but I could do it now 50 years later. There was a lot of discrimination against the Americans at the time in my area. We had an English settler enclave to the north of us called Kitale, which had a good country club and immense golf courses, but which I rarely went to. But which all the TEAers in the border area would have gone to because that was where you went for R&R. And the British settlers were a mixed bag. Some of them, a few of them I got to know. A little condescending about educating the natives. There were other words for them as well, which my mother used to wash my mouth out with soap if I used, um, and, uh.

But I just found that transition rather interesting. And a number of my students' fathers were acquiring white, former white settler land and expanding their farms. And I found that very, I was coming at it from an African viewpoint. The settlers were basically slowly packing up and moving out very bitterly.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: Not happy about it at all. The next group, another group of Peace Corps volunteers, came in with us at the same time. They trained separately and they were settler and redevelopment people for agricultural redevelopment, and there were about 20 of them. They all had motorcycles, which we didn't have, and they were out helping Africans occupy, resettle these formerly European land plantations in the states and trying to make them viable economic concerns. So that was filtering into the Kitale settler population as well. And there was one American up, two I think Americans up in that area. That was a tough job. There's somebody, I've got a couple of buddies from that period. They ought to be interviewed if they haven't done.

So there was some negative vibes about these young Americans coming in there. But the bias at my school was that it was real discomfort, that something about my English that probably wasn't, wasn't quite kosher in a sense. I adapted my English very, very carefully to the British pronunciation of everything. In fact, I could pretty much fudge it when I was with Brits. And hitchhike to Nairobi with a British couple picking me up, I could pretty much speak British English and they would be relatively comfortable. Why aren't, you know, you're not like the rest of the Americans? Because I was very conscious of keeping it fairly. There was an oral exam as well, an oral English exam, which was very important. And I, uh, I sensed the discomfort and I felt, listen, I can adapt to that easily enough, you know, to speak Queen's English.

So those were some of the early challenges. The African teachers as well were a little uncomfortable. None of them taught English, but I worked with them as well. We all became a great learning community, basically, and everybody grew. Everybody grew. The students grew. And to this day, I'm in touch with quite a few of my former students. Sadly, many of them have died. And in fact, I just got an email not too long ago from one of them telling me, notifying me of someone having died. Remember, these people went through the AIDS epidemic from the eighties all the way through, and it's been horrendous. It's just been horrendous and heartbreaking for all of us. Uh, so back to Kenya in the 1960s.

Basically it was called some hard work. Exam books. You had, I. There was a writing course among other things. They had to write, I had to correct. And then I would sit in one-on-one consultations continually. We had evening preps. I spent my time in evening prep with the students. People could come up, we'd go over these things. What would you do? Now go back and do it again. The kids. Kids? They were old. Some of them were men in their twenties, easily. Late twenties, in some cases. To get back to your earlier question, they were selected by their extended families to come back and the families would pool their money to send somebody for an education because they were the key to the advancement into higher positions in the job, well-paying jobs. So there's a great deal of pressure on these boys. We call them old boys today. They have an old boys organization, Kibabii Old Boys.

Wendy McLaughlin: Wow.

Robert T. K. Scully: The name of the school was Kibabii. It was St. Mary's Kibabii Secondary School. And the St. Mary's Old Boys and I still keep in touch. Of course, today there's a web page and everybody's on Facebook and email and the students there today are nothing like when I was there. Yeah. We issued clothing to them. We had a infirmary and it was self-contained dormitories. Each form had a, each of the four years had its own dormitory, and I had to supervise one of the dormitories. They had to bathe in the morning, they had to prepare for meals, they had to help prep the meals, they had to clean up after meals. They had to keep the compound cut down so snakes didn't come on. And it was an ongoing concern. And we all had a responsibility for keeping this thing moving and efficient. And it was respected in the area.

But there was this big question mark, what's going to happen on these exams? These families pooled, sold cattle, sold. Mama sold eggs and chickens in the market for that boy's education, pay those school fees. It was very important. If they got through, there'd be another one because they'd get a salary, they'd get a job. Well, the Cambridge exams came faster than I wanted them to come. We crammed and we crammed and we crammed and in came the invigilators and we were out, you know. And then they took their exams and then we just held our breaths for months until they were published in the newspaper, the national newspapers.

Wendy McLaughlin: And you said they did better then they'd ever done?

Robert T. K. Scully: And there was, there was jubilation in the streets. People came to the school to congratulate us. The brothers were ecstatic. Everybody was. Kibabii St. Mary's was tops. There was another problem in the cultural background, other teachers and myself, and that is their expectations were not very high for the students.

Wendy McLaughlin: Mm hmm.

Robert T. K. Scully: The students were very humble. The students had low, low expectations as well. And it was, it was being communicated within the culture. The guys teaching us don't speak English, we're poor. You know, we're really at a disadvantage. Some of those guys down south of us, look at them, look at them, you know, they do all this stuff, they've got all this equipment. And we had nothing. We had chalk on a blackboard.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And, uh, and a generator in the night to give us 2 hours of electricity to study.

Wendy McLaughlin: Wow.

Robert T. K. Scully: But, uh, it was just hard work on the part of the students. But I had to have consultations with the brothers about this. I said, listen, in America, we, we really strive for the best. We assume you can do it unless you prove in your exams you can't. These kids can all go on to higher education. Some of the, some of the brothers haven't been able to do that themselves, let alone go on the university, and they were cloistered into their own societal educational institutions. I said, no, these boys need to go for it. They need to go for the golden ring. They can. And I tried to. And there's just a disconnect on the whole system.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And there was also a sense of, they don't deserve it, in a way too, they're just kind of poor. I resented that very much. It was like, you know, almost a thing, like we never had these advantages, you know? Why should they? You know, it takes time. The whole thing was, it's going to take generations. And I wasn't patient enough for that. I said, hell no. I'm the first in my family to have a college education.

Wendy McLaughlin: They can do it too.

Robert T. K. Scully: My father was told he couldn't and he didn't. He had a marvelous career. He's a great guy and he accomplished immense things. But he didn't go to college. Why? Too poor. So why try? Well, I wasn't going to let this happen to these kids. And by Jove, we had very high university admissions. I insisted they apply for everything. The monks were, the brothers were saying, ah, you know, let them try for a teacher training college, maybe they'd get in. They had a low opinion of a lot of these kids.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And I just did not accept that. And I also came from a. [tape break]

Wendy McLaughlin: Okay. If you just want to pick up where you left off.

Robert T. K. Scully: Yeah. So there were a lot of motivational challenges there. One, getting the students to have a better a sense of self-esteem that they can do it, that there's nothing keeping them back but themselves. If you work hard, you're going to do it. And maybe this is a myth in America. That's the philosophy I came to the country with. And I really look at the, I look at my journal, which is sitting over there. I was convinced that democracy and capitalism was the way, you know? I look back now and I, you know, I look at the history of Kenya and I have some other thoughts about that. I love Kenya. I love the people of Kenya to this day. And I've had the opportunity to go back many, many times.

But I also had to mentor the brothers, the teaching brothers, and the African staff in which we had some tribal issues. They were from the coast, they were from the great lake, and this was Lubukusu, and they were uncircumcised. The brothers were uncircumcised. You know, I made it very clear early because the second year was the male adult circumcision ceremony. I made it very clear. I was like, girl.

Wendy McLaughlin: I'm good.

Robert T. K. Scully: I'm good, guys, don't worry about me. The, uh, the Luo staff we had to protect. There were those in the communities [inaudible], you know. So that was some of the, the bigger circle that I was learning as I went along.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: I was the honored guest at several of my students' circumcisions in the second year, in August of the second year, and was taken up to the mountain of, I had two Maasai students that I fell in love with. They took me up to their homes and there were ceremonies going on there as well. And the related tribe in Massawa came over as well. So it was a very interesting time culturally. So the students, we did a sort of a jumpstart on self-esteem as well. And can we get through these Cambridges with high grades? Sure we can!

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And, uh, but I put in the time and I tried to be a role model as well. The brothers and the teachers, we all worked like slaves that year because by golly, we were at least going to get them through the exams. Maybe not, but they had high passes, some of them did very well, and the sciences were really high. And that's [inaudible]. You know, we worked hard, we were dedicated and it was a wonderful experience that I love to this day because it was a real commitment, a real sense of accomplishment. But working to make it happen, you know? And to this day, my praises are sung in Lubukusu. I've not forgotten that, I got the lion's share of it, the love and gratitude for it. Not merited in a sense. We worked together. Everybody worked hard. Students in particular.

Quite a few went into, went to, a number went to Egerton College, which was a very important new institution in Nairobi, teaching with an agricultural focus. But you could get the next step onto another degree. And they all went on to degrees. We had several people at the University of Nairobi. We had quite a few in TTCs, teachers training colleges. Again, if you could get that under your belt and you did well, you could step on. Most of my students became bankers. One became a physician, psychiatrist, opened a practice in London, and on and on and on. They all excelled. And if you go back to the homes, as I've done over the decades.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: The material benefits of that Cambridge exam are reflected in the land they've acquired, better housing, education. Generations have been educated by these, this nest egg that was made by that extended family, by that lineage of that family. So, uh, but the pressure on these students was great. And only are they working in another language that they're not comfortable with, they've got the family pressure and the institutionalized pressure. The discipline of the Catholic monastic order was very strictly kept. No hanky panky here, no fooling around.

But we had, let me give you an example. One of my jobs at least once a week was night patrol. I had a flashlight, I had a panga, which is a sharp sword in the sense, used for cutting bush and trees. And I would go out with my dog ahead of me, usually I had a German shepherd that the brothers gave me, into the high grass because there would be students out in the surrounding grasslands with blankets over their heads and flashlights studying into the wee hours of the morning if you didn't catch them. They had to get their sleep.

Wendy McLaughlin: Wow.

Robert T. K. Scully: Healthy body, healthy mind, healthy soul, you know.

Wendy McLaughlin: Healthy boundaries.

Robert T. K. Scully: Yeah, yeah. And you'd have to go out. And sure enough, there they were. And you'd drag them back and I never turned them in. But I mean, the headmaster was ruthless about. Oh, another cultural clash I had was caning was official and required. If you had a student that needed discipline, you caned them, which meant they leaned over a chair and you beat them with a stick. This was institutionalized in schools at that point, and the headmaster did most of it. I had a couple of opportunities, and of course, I, you know, it's like a Tom Sawyer movie. It was like a Chevy Chase kind of comedy, you know. And I never laid a finger on any of the students. But there was this European discipline, you know, these are, these, you spare the rod, you spoil the student. And it was a strong African tradition that came from the British as well.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: Not to mention flogging grown men in public places for, you know, break, breaching whatever the colonial rules were at the time. And humiliating people was, you know, it was a very transitional period in Kenyan history. Thank God I was there. I have just, it was just been a wonderful, wonderful experience to have been there at that time. And my journals, my diaries, my field notes, etcetera, are historic documents. Now, I've published a number of things on that, on that period, information I collected from the period. And when I went back to graduate school, I did graduate studies in anthropology. My M.A. was on the Bukusu and pieced together a quick and dirty thing to get me through on the Bukusu people and some of their cultural interests and cultural attributes.

In my second year, brother Martino took over the fourth form. I worked with a new team taught, but he basically had the class for the next Cambridge. He spoke very good English and boy, he, we, I mean, he got really proficient in English. He was very good to begin with. He was the English master that I basically upgraded. And so he did that and the next year did quite well as well, about the same as the first year, which was good.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: So it was, a momentum got started. And a British guy, David Hill, came in to replace me. He did not teach. He taught the lower form English the year I left, and brother Martino took others. It was kind of interesting. But in my evaluation and recommendations to the brother master, headmaster, the brother headmaster, I guess it was. I said, keep your eyes on this Brit. I don't know if it was a bias I had from having a bad taste from my own experiences.

Wendy McLaughlin: He wasn't a Peace Corps volunteer?

Robert T. K. Scully: No, he was, uh, TEAA. Oh, no, I'm sorry.

Wendy McLaughlin: I thought they were gone.

Robert T. K. Scully: Well, the British group continued a little bit after the year. No, he was an English contract teacher.

Wendy McLaughlin: Oh.

Robert T. K. Scully: They were still, they had a budget to send contract teachers and they made good money. They were provided with a car. And so they were, it was a pretty good deal for this young guy just out of Oxford. We became good friends, but he just, in my opinion, God help me if he hears this tape someday. I don't think he had the, I don't think he was hungry enough. You know, I really was challenged. I felt like my country, I was representing my country. I was representing so many things. I was personifying so many things and there was such high expectations for me. I think he just was gliding in. It was a good two year stint. I'll make a lot of money when I'm here and it will all be sent home because I have an allowance expense. I get a car. They guy had never owned a car and his parents never owned a car. You know, he was, this was a prime position for him just out of Oxford.

So I said just, uh, I would, it's a very different motivation for being here. And the next year he left. He went up to, the Brits were up in Kamusinga at the Quaker school, big school, and he wanted the collegiality of his own and so on. And never quite, I think, although he stayed on for quite a while, he couldn't give the money back [inaudible] nor the rest of it. So there were, there were other motivations for them. And it wasn't always, in my opinion at the time, the betterment of the local population. And I found the Brits very condescending to the local teachers. And as my father was of Irish Catholic ancestry, he wasn't particularly, you know, active in that. But I mean, in the community expected certain things of them to conform.

But there's one thing I stick by, and that is the Catholic nuns. I went to a Catholic school. These four foot high ladies had to deal with Ramapo Mountain people and everything else. And they were running inner schools in Bronx and, you know, and these ladies ran a topnotch organization. We all went to college, you know, and they were in Kenya, the African nuns and the Dutch nuns, and there were Irish nuns. And I'll tell you, I had to meet them at teachers conferences. And the British were so condescending to them. I bitterly resented this as these ladies were putting their whole lives into this in getting these girls educated in these mission schools and things. And they resented the Irish accent. And I'd be, I would speak an Irish brogue whenever I was at these meetings, just out of spite.

They were so condescending that it was, it was sexist, it was anti-Catholic, and it was tripe. And by Jove, it, I, I decided what team I was going to be on. You're getting a lot of the biases. I haven't thought about these things for 50 years, but it's all coming out. I'm having a brain dump right now.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: Thank you. Poor tape is going to take all this. But so we, uh, we got this group going. The second year I was more liberated, very confident. I was known widely. Wherever there was a Catholic mass station, people knew me.

Wendy McLaughlin: Cause you traveled a lot.

Robert T. K. Scully: And Brother Martino used to start going with me, but there was a liability to him as well. He wasn't as flexible as I was. Plus he was a celibate monk and the brother Superior who would come around leaned on them heavily about this. You don't go out mixing around with women, all right? And they had to, I mean, so that ended of beer parties and stuff. But, boy, wherever you went, there was a beer party somewhere. And of course, when they found out that it was okay, that's where you ended up. And you got to meet people and they are something you have to experience.

Now, I had a group of students when I taught at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, for a couple of years. I put together an East Africa program. It was in the early seventies, what was it? '70, '73 or so. I had my first baby with me and she went with me. It was a Georgetown University and Hartwick College combined program, and the Foreign Service students at Georgetown were going over. What a great crowd. But it was a long haul. We had almost, it was two, two academic terms, a lot for 30 students, one guy. And but I had one of the students do an independent study at the school. So he got kind of behind the scenes and I took him around and I walked him for a couple of days, got him acclimated to the Bukusu and all this. He got to meet the brothers. Two of the brothers, three of the brothers were still there that I worked with. So that was good.

And he did a very nice study, went on to do a higher degree in something or another. We had lunch not too long ago, and he was down in Atlanta on a business trip or something. But, uh, why am I saying that? Got some very interesting feedback from the brothers about me. And they had a bad mouth, the bad taste in their mouth about my going out and drinking beer with the natives. And they were very afraid that, that I might do something bad, whatever that was in their minds, and it would be a black mark on the school. The reverse was true.

Wendy McLaughlin: Sure.

Robert T. K. Scully: The elite of the community always welcomed me into their homes. There were all kinds of social, class distinctions within the Bukusu culture at the time, socioeconomic and clan and tribal differentiations. And one had to learn these rules and not to side with the elite. Because into my second year, I went to a conference in Nairobi, an Educators of African History Conference. It was heavily British, there were a few Africans, and a couple of us mavericks down there. And there was a Mill Hill priest who was a degreed historian there, a nice guy I got to know. And Brian Fagan, the archeologist, was the keynote speaker, and he wowed me and really confirmed my decision to go back and study anthropology.

But you had a lot of faith based conservative mission kind of people there, and the Brits in their white shorts and their white knee socks and their white, immaculate white ironed shirts. The Americans in their jeans and their, you know, plaid shirts. I mean, I'm still in my, this is my Peace Corps uniform. And there was such a divide. People sat, it was very segregated.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And we, this guy got up and I've never forgotten it. And he said, this is a farce. How can you teach African history when there is no African history? Well, I taught history the first year I was there as well, African history. The textbook was called The Coming of the Europeans. This was the required textbook for the African history syllabus.

Wendy McLaughlin: Right.

Robert T. K. Scully: You know, well, I had, in training I had done my fair share of reading. Basil Davidson, The Lost Cities of Africa, you know, and archeology was just coming of age. The great work was just starting there. The Journal of African History was just started. A number of academic outlets for the first time were getting off the ground. Azania up here started in Kenya and I have a couple of articles published. You know, these things, you know, this being Africa, this just started. This was all new when I was there and I got wind of it at this conference. But the, there was such a divide. The Africans being very humble and whatever the Brits say, it's just they grew up in this thing, whatever they say is right. And the Americans like me saying, well, wait a minute, you know?

I just came from meeting with the hereditary ruler of the Bukusu tribe, and he gave me 30 names of his ancestor. If you even factor ten years a name, you're getting back a hundred years here. There's a history. How can you say that? It wasn't written down. I said no, but there's a rich, rich oral tradition that's being passed on. There are people who learn this stuff and transmit it. No, there's something more. Well, I didn't know what I was talking about really. I'd taken the anthropology courses in graduate. I had a history degree and it was all documents. And I did documentary resources, researches and stuff. But I was suddenly aware of, by golly, somebody's got to speak up for these guys. And the African teachers are just too intimidated, they would, you know, be polite, you know, you never question anybody, you know, anything like that. All we did was raise questions. And, you know, this was something new.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: You don't believe it? Say so.

Wendy McLaughlin: Right, right.

Robert T. K. Scully: Of course. Religion was a very careful, you had to be very careful not to in any way. And I didn't want the headmaster to find out I said anything that might be questionable about Catholic teachings.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: So I had to be very respectful of that. You know, again, you have to conform to the culture and you had a whole layering of cultures there. But most of the local people were staunch Catholics, and these weren't, you know, first start-up. These people, there was a great tradition of that. It goes back, went back to the 1890s. And boy, you know, we are not Quakers, we are Catholics.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And they were proud of their bishop who then became the leader of the whole East Africa, you know, he was a, like his father he was a great leader. And second term things really started changing. I got out into the bush. The brothers were more comfortable with it. The headmaster kind of saw the good part of it. And I got, my, my way around the headmaster at first in this first term, building on to the second, was after this conference was they're recommending starting local history societies at the schools where students go out and that there might be a paper as part of the African history thing that would develop. Wasn't there yet, but it started. Enough people were of the opinion that there was something out there worth finding out about and then write it down, you know. And within that will be a kernel of history.

So, boy, that's all I needed, you know? So I had a new project. We started an African history society. Everybody had to belong, by decree of the headmaster. And first term break of second, uh, first term of second year break. Everybody had a questionnaire, something like what we're doing right now. Sit down and get the oldest person in your family. I was very careful on gender, man and woman. We want to get females as well as males in this. There was a tendency to let the man speak. And I said, and of course we were all, we were all males. So you're going in and there was a filter there of, you know, a woman might talk to a girl very differently from they would to a boy. There were very strict rules about who said what. And for example, you don't talk to certain categories of females at all. You know, you don't even, you avoid them. You don't even look at them. So, uh, so but I had to learn that.

And we started getting unbelievable treasures of information coming in. That year, Dr. Bethwell Ogot published his history of the Luo, it was around that time, based on oral traditions. I think I probably have a copy of it up here. Oh, you should see this. I mean, all that stuff is oral tradition from Kenya and East Africa. And, uh, but we were suddenly the crest of a new wave of history. Students are very enthusiastic. I'm out visiting a student home, beautiful farm around the Malakisi area, near a river. Very wealthy family, lots of cattle, lots of land, and all kinds of complex social implications of that. You got the money, what happened to the other folks? You know, that sort of thing.

Wendy McLaughlin: Sure.

Robert T. K. Scully: Some had it and some didn't have it. But I'm out there and near the patriarch's home is this great big wall. It's a mud wall, muram is a very, it's like a clay. It's very, very hard. Some bake it and it's as hard as cement almost. This great big wall with a couple of funny things on top. And then the rest are just kind of bushes growing. And we're over there, I think we went and sat under it to get a little shade or something. We'd pulled out some chairs, we're sitting in the shade. And I'm asking him where he, you know. He said, well, that's where my grandfather lived. That's his fort. Hmm. Oh, what's that?

And lo and behold, most of these very old, old settlement homes, because the Bukusu came in hundreds and hundreds of years back and displaced an earlier, you know, it was a very complex history of movement of people and so on. And something kind of be all over the place. Then I found out, I met with an old guy, the grandfather of someone, that the Europeans came here with machine guns and bombs and blew this one up. I said, what? Yeah, we all have to leave. We all have to go to, uh, to Chetambe, Chetambe. I still hear him shouting at me, Chetambe, Chetambe! Don't you go know where? Yeah. Yes. You know, I'm saying no. I was sitting in the ruins of Lumboka forts. It had deep moats. It was like a European, Scottish fortification of way, way back in the Middle Ages.

And so I said, hey, we're on to something guys. Hold on to that one. We've got something going here. And so.

Wendy McLaughlin: Let me pause it. So I'm not sure that.

Robert T. K. Scully: You don't need to show and tell. Uh. Yeah, that's where I was.

Wendy McLaughlin: Oh, wow.

Robert T. K. Scully: And then there were, then I found out there were some documents about it. And let's see. Yeah, here's one. I found that in Joseph Thompson's. 1885.

Wendy McLaughlin: So this is a picture of the settlement.

Robert T. K. Scully: That's a Bukusu, that's a Bukusu fortified, big moat, it has a moat to keep people out, and then arrows and spears and everything else and that the garbage was found.

Wendy McLaughlin: Wow.

Robert T. K. Scully: And then I did a couple of publications on this because I didn't want it to be lost somehow. So that's Peter Simi and I'm still in touch with him. Here's another guy. I was just, this was a nice sort of pocket. Anyway, that'll give you an idea.

Wendy McLaughlin: Interesting.

Robert T. K. Scully: Yeah. So, you know, you're sitting there and you suddenly realize, holy Toledo. I mean, gee. Do you want to put it back on?

Wendy McLaughlin: No, I've had it on.

Robert T. K. Scully: Oh, you have it on. Oh, gosh. Oh, good.

Wendy McLaughlin: Hope it's okay.

Robert T. K. Scully: Anyway, so I discovered that we've got this complex fortification network of an earlier generation withstanding and fighting the British who had come in. A couple of British officers had come in with heavy artillery and a huge army of Somalis and Maasai warriors. And horrible atrocities took place at the time. And Chief Sudi's father, Namachanga, had to go down. Captives were taken, cattle by the hundreds of head were taken down, and they were going to conquer this area. So it was really a last stand. Uh, nationalism, in a sense, you know, to defend our land against this invading force we don't want here.

So Namachanga went down and negotiated with the British and with the establishment of that area, and he was recognized as the leader of the area. His son Sudi, who was in his late age when I was there, then inherited. There's a lot of controversy over inheritance and the political paramounts and so on that I won't share with you now but I'm very interested in and have written about. And people still talk about it.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: But, you know, the guy that's got the money and the power and the public office is the guy who is the winner by and large. That's the rule. That's kind of humanity in this. And then there are losers. And sometimes losers become winners, but not always. Not if the winners can, can neutralize you in some way. So that's part of the whole tribal setup that I found myself in. So we had students out going around and documenting these. And then about two or three years later, in 1970 or so, a couple of years later, I went back and did another follow up on it to get better information. And that's where this Azania article came from.

But the output of that was a guy named Simiyu Wandibba, one of my students, went out and met with me on field trips to collect oral history. He is now Dr. Simiyu Wandibba, University of Nairobi, highly published anthropologist and archeologist. And in 1971, I think it was, when I was back, I had a little break, a little sabbatical, and I had a little bit of money. So I went back and bought a motorcycle and took off, staying with people at their farms and revisiting everybody but collecting data. Simiyu went with me and got the bug. I happened to have in my backpack five or six anthropology monographs at the time on African tribal groups that were written, and there wasn't a lot done at that time. This was the beginning of that whole study.

So it was kind of an interesting time to become an anthropologist, and I left them with him. He still has them today. These were books beyond the dream of anyone at that time in East Africa. And he had them and he went on and earned a PhD in England, went back and has had a very distinguished career as an anthropologist. We talk about doing something together, doing a, writing up this fort in a more thorough and more popular way. We may or may not do it. He's got his, he's still working and he's still got a lot of stuff on his plate to do. So it may never happen. But, uh, and there are many, many other students I've kept in touch with like that. He's been to the States. We've, we've connected here in the States, as have a number of other students.

My, the baby of my graduating class was a fellow named George Mousoko, the tallest guy in the classroom, as lanky and skinny, and he was the youngest by all, by all measure the youngest, and he was the headmaster's pet as well. He used to do things with the headmaster. And we called him Georgie and I just fell in love with him. He seemed so in need of help and, you know, and bullied by the boys and teased, you know, and he just, he was the baby of the class, but bright. Very bright. And he later became president of the Central Bank of Kenya.

Wendy McLaughlin: Oh, wow.

Robert T. K. Scully: And we, and we had one boy, George Mousoko [sic], who had been badly crippled with polio as a child, and the polio epidemic was rampant. And later on, I got involved in stamping, you know, kicked polio out of Kenya, out of East Africa program through the CDC. But, uh, George, uh, Mumelo was, not George Mumelo, uh.

Wendy McLaughlin: Mousoko?

Robert T. K. Scully: George Mousoko and then Joseph Mumela, Mulelu, walked with a big stick. His one leg was completely disfigured. He was out playing soccer and he wanted to be just like all the rest of the guys. And I have to tell you, he was very bright and he became one of my helpers. I had students assigned to me to help do things. They'd have to take attendance if I had a job. And then I had my main, I had a proctor as well. He was the boy proctor, the head boy, my head boy, became the president of another bank in Nairobi. Barclays, I think, was it Barclays or National? I can't remember. And I'm still in touch with him and all of his children and his grandchildren and his lovely wife, got to know his wife very well. I've stayed with him a number of times in Nairobi.

When I would go on assignment to Nairobi for MAP, there was no hotel bill. This is a big savings for a not-for-profit.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: Anyway, Joseph is now deceased sadly, but he met my first born. He was at the baptizing of my firstborn. And, you know, we did just wonderful things over the generations. Uh, Paul, George Mousoko and I met in Nairobi, I forgot when, in the seventies. And driving in his car back to Bukusu land from Nairobi, he was killed in a horrible accident. The mortality on Kenyan roads is very high. It's just disastrous. And he and his oldest son, who was just a chip off the old block, tall, lanky, you know, that same age that I knew his father, was badly injured. The father was killed outright. And I just don't know. I met his widow years later and we went through the usual obsiquities and so on, because I'd been removed from them. But I had to do that.

And the boy, I think, was getting better at the time, but he was very seriously injured. I don't know how extensive the brain damage was or something. But just the saddest stories to this wonderful, wonderful guy. Talk about overcoming environment. He was very poor. He wasn't from a big farm and, uh, and just had the opportunity and he just went with it, you know, and worked his way right to the corporate top. And that's, that's, that's what Peace Corps has done, at least in East Africa with my experience. We were there to basically turn the education system over to locals, and we did that. The number of teachers that came out of those classes who became headmasters of big schools is just astonishing. Yes.

And then Jackie Schwartz and Nancy Geeston were the two women over at Misikhu who, again, they have a story like that. The nun, the head nun there was Sister Adelaide. And she, I think, at first didn't like anything about me. She didn't like me going over there. I would hitch a ride with a priest because the priests had to go around every once in a while and touch base with their colleagues and so. And Jackie and I'd have me, Jackie and Nancy would have me stay over at their place. Sister Adelaide never heard of it. I guess they're lucky.

Wendy McLaughlin: Typical Peace Corps but.

Robert T. K. Scully: Yeah, I mean, but the settlement boys would come down, the Peace Corps volunteers in settlement, two or three of them and their buddies would come down. They'd all camp out on the floors. [tape break]

Well, Sister Adelaide, it was a cultural transformation for Sister Adelaide as well. She's now in her nineties, living at their convent in the Netherlands. She's still in touch with all of us. It was just like a whole new world for her. It transformed her into a better nun, quite frankly. And she was there for years after. But I realized very quickly, and I had been educated in primary school by nuns, so I had, I was, I had a good notion of how nuns functioned. And I realized we've got to build her confidence here. Whatever baggage she has, we've got to help her on this or else it's going to be hard on the two women. Harder on the two women because, by Jove, they weren't going to not see Americans put them up when they came in town. It was just, that was the Peace Corps tradition.

We all carried sleeping bags. Every one of those motorcycles had a big sleeping. Everybody slept on the floor and we all partied. So she got the nuns to come over, of course, for some of these. And then they got more comfortable. But I made it a point the first time I met her to show up at Mass on Sunday before I left to go back with the priest alone or whatever. I can't remember why I was there, but I was there for Sunday, and I made it a point to let her know that I knew the rules.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And she became a lot more comfortable over the years. But we still correspond at least once or twice a year. I'd been to visit her on my way to Africa and she had the Kenyan nun table for me, all the sisters that worked in Africa. They phased themselves out. They created African teaching organizations, and then they went back to where they were supposed to be. They very much saw themselves as a temporary, temporary interim necessity until there were enough women with the certification and qualifications to teach. And so she really had a learning curve with the Americans when they got there, I'll tell you.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: But we had fun then, and it was hard on the two American women. They, none of them came from any familiarity with that tradition. And boy, she was a, Miss Brodie. She was a Miss Brodie, as was my headmaster. I think I could work around him easily and they could with the nun. Number one, she had a lot of other handicaps. When students got pregnant, they had to go home, and that was the end of their education. And that really bugged Sister Adelaide. She was going to keep these girls not pregnant and in school for as long as she possibly could, and that was her mission in life. And she had all kinds of interesting attitudes about males and so on.

Wendy McLaughlin: Sure.

Robert T. K. Scully: Which we used to compare notes on and have a late night, you know, swapping of horror stories and war tales when we would get together. Jackie and I are still in touch. Nancy and I met at our 50th, or whenever it was, 45th or whatever, get together. She's going strong. She's had a very interesting career. Jackie, a very interesting after Peace Corps life as well, has done some very fascinating things. As have I think most of the chaps that I had a chance to get to know. But those two women and I had a very special bond because we were it and we were very, we were in sister-brother establishments.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: So that kind of enabled us to connect. Now, I'm working on a novel right now a little bit about that.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: Whether or not, how long it takes, took me four years to get this bloody thing going. That's mainly because I have few other things to do in life besides write. But the second year we get this history project going. USAID or one American agency got a whole shipment of books, donated books from all over, everything you can imagine, and they were in a warehouse to the ceiling. And my next vacation, I went down and I literally, I got ahold of the brothers. They came down with a station wagon and I got. But we trucked back, we built a whole library. Lots of history, of course, but whatever we'd get, old Encyclopedia Britannica, all kinds of things, things that nobody had ever seen before.

Wendy McLaughlin: Where did they come from?

Robert T. K. Scully: Ah, they were gifts from America and they came in containers. Just books, throwaway books I guess. And we hauled back, you would not believe, anything that was nonfiction I got my hands on. There were historic, you know, Stanley's, vintage copies of Stanley's biographies, but lots of good educational material.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: So the library became our history center as well. And we started a history. The notes would be copied carefully and neatly in notebooks, and then we would start the library. And I don't know where it is right now but. And well, Simiyu Wandibba is a good example. He used data like that was published and so on, and people used it in teaching school later on. And they had a, we had a history newsletter, and then we had, in the school newspaper we'd always have a section on local history. So it really took hold. Within a year, it was, it was off and going, and still goes on today, I'm sure. So that was the project. What else happened? I then went out and began exploring some of the forts on my own and collecting data, but connecting the students in every case.

And, uh, I wrote a couple of plays while I was there and one was called The Enemy Within, and it kind of tied into an earlier phase of Bukusu history that I was picking up and learning about it. And I thought, well, let's, let's make it. And we went on the road with it, went all the way down to Kisumu with it, which was a big trip at the time. We got a big lorry, a fish lorry or something we borrowed from somebody. And we piled these, we made our scenery which were movable flats, we called them. And so the art classes worked on it, the drama society worked on it. And but it was all African theme and African idiom. I had begun to learn how women speak to men and they're happy when they're angry, but in terms of endearment. And how people court and things like that, well, you know, kind of local, but kind of looked down upon by missionaries and Europeans. They were not understood. And how did the rainmaker function?

So we had this play that developed around a village of Lubukusu, of course, and it was a time of famine. It was also a time when the Arab slave traders are coming in, which I'd heard about, and they'd come up from [inaudible]. Of course, Bukusu you didn't mess around with [inaudible]. You had to tread carefully in Bukusu land. So I kind of wove that into the play. And, of course, it was an all men's, all boys school. So and 50-50 male female roles. So we had a lot of fun dressing the boys up as, that was the one they wanted. They wanted, they wanted the brassieres. I mean, we had women's kind of cloth, padded them up and all this. And then a woman's barefooted. And then the men were kind of the guys.

And we had, and I don't know if I even have a copy of the script, it was mimeographed on these old mimeograph things, almost illegible. And we went on the road with it, and we went into, there was a county council drama competition in Kisumu. I'm sorry, Kakamega, halfway to Kisumu. And the county council officer still in his white shorts, his white knee socks, impeccable, immaculate white shirt, walking in with his epaulets and everything, in all his regalia. And they were all doing takeoffs of Shakespeare, which were all in the curriculum. We had to memorize Shakespearean plays in Kenya to get through the Cambridge at the time, and they all knew Shakespeare by heart. I mean, fancy me coming in there, well, we've memorized it.

But anyway, this was the first African, all African, African thing. And, uh, and we went on and the audience, all the students from the different schools, it was packed, big place. And pandemonium. They loved it. There were some technical issues we had. We had our own unusual seeming invasion, which he took, marked us off on, of course. And the love scene was a big hit. These two guys, you know, in an African love scene where it's very formal, it's not in any way, you know, suggestive or indecent.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: But still, the fact that, you know, this is going on. But, you know, I explained to some of the, David Hill, you know, Shakespeare had no female, they were all males in Shakespeare's day. Men dressed as women, and they were Juliet and all of them. So this is well in the Shakespearean tradition. And there may be a little Shakespearean theme of betrayal and even in the play. But the big markdown, we were kind of booted out of the competition on this, was the rainmaker who came in. And he did Bukusu rainmaking customs. Oh, the Bukusu loved it. They just thought [inaudible]. And it's not this. Well, the, you know, the invigilating committee, the three people, one was the Scotsman, the other was the Brit with the knee socks, and somebody else I've forgotten. And the Scotsman, I remember very clearly, was very flamboyant and prided himself on his Shakespeare.

And they're saying, no, no, no. You know, you've got to have, got to be more dramatic than that. And he's got to get there shouting and the thunder, you know. And I got two of my students with me. I think they had two come in with me. They, whoever the head boy was in school, you know. And we're looking at one another like, what [inaudible]? So we did it right. We did it within the customs of the people and in Bukusu land it was a smashing hit. It was a Broadway success. But they marked us down on that and I tried to explain it. He would hear nothing on it. You know, this is drama, Mr. Scully. You know, it's got to be dramatic. And I said, this was very dramatic. It had huge impact.

Wendy McLaughlin: It's accurate.

Robert T. K. Scully: Yes. It was very culturally appropriate.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: That didn't exist in the cultural, culturally appropriate? What's that? You've got to get through the Cambridge and you've got to be British to get through the Cambridge, basically. So a clone of the British, you get through the Cambridge. So those were the the fun and games we had. Uh.

We had a little, a couple of negative things. A lady, we had had, shortly before I got there and while I was there, a couple of uprisings. In the political arena at the time was a group centered more in the Highlands near Mount Elgon, we were further down on the slopes of the mountain, called the Dini ya Msambwa. The religion of the ancestors is my rough translation, and Elijah Masinde was the prophet. And during the Mau Mau period and the anti British period, he was kind of an offshoot of that, very anti-European, very anti- British and all that, but also returned to your indigenous, very anti mission. You know, we have indigenous, we have religion, you know, return to this, our customs. We have circumcision like they talk about in the Bible, we have that already. We don't need to learn that, we have it.

And to some extent, I kind of agreed with him, but I couldn't tell everybody that. But the Dutch were Europeans. There wasn't always a separation from the Brits and the colonial people, although they were there because the Brits didn't want Irish missionaries coming. There was that issue going on. That's why the Dutch came in and they could control them a little easier than the firebrand Irish who were raising hell all over the place with their missions, and they was getting the natives thinking independence. As I say, up the Irish. Three cheers for the Irish.

But there were some, some demonstrations at the mission. Some were kind of scary. Nobody knew what was going to happen. Some guns were shot off, you know, and that sort of thing. It was at night usually. And then police had to come in to corroborate it. I mean, some priests went out on a motorcycle down to get the police, took forever coming back. You know, in the meantime, who knew what was going to happen?

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: So there'll be a little of that in my novel, because I still remember there was scare that they were coming one night. And the compound was this outpost house where I was all surrounded by a hedge of wild growth. And some of the Loa kept it down, kept the snakes out and keep the animals out. And then I had kind of a hedged entry way out into a bunch of little, there was an African quarter where the cooks and things from the mission and the school and everything lived. These were indigent widows and things would be following and the catechists. Some of the men who were educated in catechism, taught catechism. It's complicated. There was a priest house, which is a bigger, a huge church that was built by the Dutch, and then a girls convent school, uh, and then a big convent complex with about eight or 9 to 10 nuns. It changed from time to time.

Here four of the nuns were teachers. The rest were kind of doing other stuff outside the tasks in the convent for the religious community. They had their own way of doing things. And all of whom I got to know quite well. The sisters were very friendly, but the sisters had their own chapel in their little, little meeting hall they had, just a little, like a little lean-to thing with a little bell. Then the mission church had its own bell from Holland. And, uh, and then every place there was a dog. The Dutch had brought in these German shepherds, and they had a couple of litters. Everybody had a German shepherd. Priests had these great big wolves. Oh, God. I was scared. They never, they never took to me, that one big gray German shepherd always kind of went for my legs or I hit it. And got, knocked up my dog, which the priest took great delight in. Those are the little things that go on in a little closed community.

But anyway, here we are one night. My dog's very restless, the dog slept under my bed. I had a little tiny bed with a mosquito net.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And all your windows are open. And you could hear these dogs way down over at the sisters compound. My dog's kind of awake, growling. And then the nun's bell starts going. Through the bell, you can hear some voices down there, the bell's ringing, you know. Before you know it, the mission church bell's ringing. The priests' dogs are going bonkers. And my dog's at the window, you know, waiting. And then you can hear dogs over at the school compound. But there had been some problems, you know, and there was rumor that there might be something there. So here I am out at the other end of this thing and there's nothing but bush and the mountain ahead of me and leopard stuff out there. And it's the middle of the night. So, you know, what do you do?

I took off into the bush. And there was a muto hill, a little cluster of volcanic stuff, lots of little farms around there. And I took off. I'd been there in the daytime, in the middle of the night. I had a flashlight. I was expecting to be bitten by a cobra or something along the way, they're all out hunting at night, or running into something, you know, bigger than that. And I went over and I eventually went in, and even there people were alert that there might be something wrong. So I went and I spent the night there. They didn't know if I had been abducted until I got back.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And I left the dog in the house. So if they came, he'd raise hell, you know, and that would keep them at bay for a while, maybe keep them from burning the house down or something. So anyway, that was kind of excited.

Wendy McLaughlin: But what was it?

Robert T. K. Scully: Uh, there had been some people coming through, see, the main road to Kitale and the Highlands went right by. The mission was split on each side of the road. And they'd come through and they had a little, they had ways of doing things. They marched and they carried stuff and they had clubs and all that sort of thing. And the prophet had spoken somewhere and this was one of the offshoots going up, I guess, to join the prophet.

Then there were a couple of other issues as well and other incidents. Well, the sea captain, uh, priest, Father Valstra, wouldn't put up with. He wasn't afraid of anybody. He dealt with the Nazis, he could deal with the [inaudible]. And so he was kind of this maverick out there with a gun. And I'm saying, well, for Christ's sakes, don't shoot anybody. You want problems, shoot somebody, then you really got problems. You know, just keep your powder dry. But, you know, but don't take any, don't get heroic here. Get in your little car and get the heck out of there if you think it's bad, you know? All three of them took it out.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: But we were worried about the sisters, you know, beaten, abductions or who knew what would go on. They didn't know, because they were kind of, they were colonial products. You know, it was the missionaries that created these women who lived celibately and didn't marry and have children like normal women would do. And also, you know, there were all kinds of cultural problems.

Anyway, there were some more. They had another, a thing went on at the market near Misikhu, where the other American, Americans were stationed. And that didn't amount to much. The police came in right away and broke it up. And, you know, but we were aware of that. And traveling into the mountains, I was well aware. And part of the religious group's focus was the sacred lake there about 13,000 feet on Mount Elgon, in the Elgon caves. There was oil coming, this time into their, this was their holy place. And that's where the prophet Elijah Masinde would go to commune with the, uh, msambwa, the ancestral spirits, and I won't get into the details.

But shortly after that incident, a little Volkswagen drives in, dog's going bonkers again, and a lady by the name of Audrey Ritger steps out of her car with an African gentleman, and she's here to, she's a sociologist from Canada.

Wendy McLaughlin: Ah.

Robert T. K. Scully: York University. She wants to know everything that went on, maybe she's doing a study of it. And she has written about the Dini ya Msambwa. Elijah Masinde was in jail shortly before I got there, which is one of the problems. He was jailed by the government because they didn't have control over it. And I think with the new government, they didn't want to have this loose canon going around, maybe causing problems. So there were a lot of, there was a lot of ill feeling. But, you know, it was the colonials up in Kitale and these missionaries that were kind of the target of that group. So you never knew. I think it was pretty innocuous, but you didn't know.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: There was no electricity, no telephones, and the police couldn't be everywhere, everywhere, but after every time and so on. So anyway, that was kind of an interesting incident that led me to get the students to look into that as well and analyze it. And, and we would have, I'd be careful in a Christian environment to talk too much about it because he was considered the bad guy. I saw him as a revitalization leader. They happen all over the world where they have colonialism. People go back to the roots. And you get a following and you amass some wealth by doing that. But we see it right here, all of these great mega church leaders that become big men, and they have a voice that they wouldn't have otherwise. That's the whole story in my opinion, in my view of things at the time.

I've gone to the University of Missouri. I've gone to camp meetings and watched these evangelists rile up the people and do the collection and drive off in their big truck or big car with more than when they arrived. So, you know, I didn't see it as much different from that. Only a little maybe more dangerous because we didn't know. And there was this history of violence among the groups. They had rebelled. They had risen up. They had fought with the police and fought with the army. So, you know. But it was transition. It turned out not to be as bad. But I didn't know. And, you know, it kind of added a little excitement to my sense of well-being, to know that I was the white guy way off in the bush. And everybody knew I was there. So that was that.

I did get invited to the circumcision ceremonies. I had several students circumcised while I was there, and I went through the whole process with them. I have photographs of one of my favorite students at the time, who, uh, we had a little issue at one point where on another side. But anyway, the brothers were very unhappy with this whole circumcision pagan heathen stuff. You know, they didn't want, they really were upset and they were upset that I was going. Some of the biggest pillars of the Catholic Church there were having their sons and grandsons circumcised. And then the bigger, the first one I went to was at the home of Pius Soseandrew, a big farm. He had gone to Canada, an early Kenyan to go and get an outside education in agriculture. And he brought back and he learned how to market and develop. So he had a big farm and was very, very prosperous, had vehicles and plows and back and forth.

And we were good friends and I went to his grandson's circumcision, and I danced in the big circles with everyone. Early in the morning, I slept in my sleeping bag. At dawn we went running with the whole group, ringing bells, making it down to the river where he was circumcised and brought back and put into seclusion. Big party, livestock butchered, beer brewed for everybody. And I was there for a couple of days, had a great time. Loved it. I felt so bonded at that point because as far as they were concerned, he was just another guy. You know, I joined in and we, and really it was almost as if I was just another.

Wendy McLaughlin: [inaudible]

Robert T. K. Scully: I guess that was it. But it was an amazing feeling to just realize you were respected. And but you know what? When it comes to a good party, if you're in, you're in.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And of course, subsequent years, I've been, I've been parted out in many cases because people will, if they know you're coming, they'll have a big reception for you. And people come in from all over. And when I go home with students even today, and I'll be doing that more I'm sure, they'll have a big, big brouhaha. And it's always delightful. I've been to huge funerals since then. One of the big, big men of the area, when I was back in Kenya in '94, I think it was, the word went out. The son of Mulero, one of the great politicians of the Bukusu tribe and a local folk hero, has died. He was in the opposition FORD-Kenya, Ford, FORD-Kenya party, which was in that area against the government and the dictator, Moi. And I had just arrived. I had some work to do. But Makiki Chabay came, my former student, my head boy, came over and drove up and came into the office. I was going to stay with him.

And he said, this big meeting's tonight. All the Bukusu and all the students and coming together and you're going to come? I said, I'm in, count me in. And they met at some hangout where they hung out in Nairobi, and the body of the deceased was being kept in confinement, delayed burial, because there were all kinds of political indications. Was it assassination? And he just happened to get hit by a car, you know, and so on. So eventually a whole funeral cortege went back. Every Bukusu in Nairobi went back, I think, for this. And I went. And I brought with me a new staff member at MAP, an African guy from a totally different tribal area who was going with, learning a job. And I felt he'd better come along. You want to get, you want to see Kenya? You come with me.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And he'd never been to western Kenya. And we stayed at a hotel that one of my former students had built, but on the road near, uh, and partied the night before and got ready for the big funeral. And it was a tribal, a major tribal event. Everyone I ever knew was there, and I was dressed in a nice suit and surrounded by my bodyguard of students and we went in and it was a big Catholic ceremony. But it was also a traditional ceremony. And, uh, what was the name? Paul Mboya or something like that was this guy that was with me to learn the ropes because he was going to be one of my AIDS, people who go out and trains people in AIDS awareness and so on. And you better believe my former Peace Corps area was a big target because I was going to get as many resources in there as possible. You help your own. Home first.

Wendy McLaughlin: Right.

Robert T. K. Scully: And plus cooperative, cooperative. The cardinal archbishop was fully cooperative at that point. We made some cultural concessions on to do things for the material for his people, and that was bitterly resented by someone. I said, listen, you don't throw the baby out with the bath. It's a hierarchical religion, it's a hierarchical tribe. You work with the hierarchy down. If they don't get on board, you don't get the lower, the lower levels on board at all.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: If he doesn't endorse it. So we got his endorsement. And we went to this huge funeral and it was like a tribal homecoming. It was just an amazing sort of thing. And I realized then that I had had a real impact. I mean, I'm not in any way trying to, but the fact that it was the right time to be in that place, to be a catalyst for things to start happening. They would have happened anyway. It could have been somebody else. But I was there. So I had the immense pleasure, opportunity, and learning experience too. And guess what? I came back and became an anthropologist.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: And I like to think that that experience led me to this big culturally sensitive AIDS initiative.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: Working in a very important component of the community based leadership. And I knew from my Peace Corps experience, if you didn't have the faith leadership behind you, people won't do things. And that was being neglected because the faith community leadership widely was an impediment to getting things done. And the sexual, sexuality part of the whole, you know, was so complicated and there were all kinds of misconceptions. How do you deal with those so that you can save lives? And you deal with it by getting everybody fully informed, knowledgeable, and committed. The cardinal took his time, I'll tell you that. And that was a disappointment.

And there was a quid pro quo as I knew there would be. There's nothing that gets exchanged in Bukusu land where, you know, you do this for me, I'll do this for you. And Cardinal Otunga brought his theologian into this very carefully. Well, I was very encouraged. First meeting I had, he said, Bob. He was sitting way over kind of apart. He had this rolling coffee table. He kicked it over to me and he came over with a footstool and sat by me. He hit my legs. We made this kind of thing in all of our seminars. They're not dealing effectively with the sexuality issues and this AIDS thing is just one component of that. I said, boy that, this guy, he's okay. Just what I wanted to hear. I said, we can work with that. He had some theologians look at the material and be sure it was scripturally correct. I wish I had some.

Wendy McLaughlin: [inaudible]

Robert T. K. Scully: Yeah, it had to be orthodox. And that was very important.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: A little footnote to that is after we got the Christian one going, we started culturally adapting it to the Islamic community. We took out Jesus. We put in Muhammad. In a sense, almost the same idea.

Wendy McLaughlin: Yeah.

Robert T. K. Scully: Almost the same idea. A surah from the Koran. A psalm, a gospel, of Ezekiel and Isaiah, whatever. And, uh, just an amazing sort of thing. [tape break]

Well, Wendy, to wrap up on the HIV AIDS program, initiated many decades after I was a Peace Corps volunteer working with Cardinal Maurice Otunga and many, many of my own students, former students scattered around western Kenya and in Nairobi, we were able to get that region activated and proactive on, on some of the big issues. The area has a very high, had at the time, at a very high statistic on HIV infection, which was pretty upsetting. And many of my students were directly affected by that, their own families and so on. And so we made a very special commitment to get things operating effectively in western Kenya in the Bukusu area.

We had a big meeting the day before, the evening before the funeral that I attended, that I was telling you about. And Paul Mumo, the staff person accompanying me, gave a presentation on what we had put together in terms of materials to educate, particularly faith based leadership. And people took it very seriously. And we launched what I think was a very successful program, which in many ways continues today. [tape break]

Wendy, I think I'll switch, we'll switch to the next tape and I'll try to wrap up. We've been putting quite a bit of time into this. I hope it's helpful. And I do want to thank you for the, for taking this project on. It's so important to try and capture these personal experiences on the part of the Peace Corps volunteers who have returned home and built lives and hopefully brought back a lot of good information and learning to their own cultures and in some way or another continue to contribute to their country of service. We'll go on to the next tape here and I'll wrap up. Thank you. [tape break]

Wendy McLaughlin, returned Peace Corps volunteer, interviewing Robert Scully, returned Peace Corps volunteer from Kenya, Kenya number one, 1964 to 1966. Wendy, I'll continue. Second year in Peace Corps, having gotten the Kibabii graduating class through the Cambridge exams, I began preparing to transition out of the country in the next year. Brother Martino, the, became the senior form English master in the second year. We worked together. We team taught somewhat to build on lessons learned. Use the American information I brought in to prep the next class for the Cambridge, as I mentioned, multiple choice questions, etcetera. And he then took over and I basically took the lower level, lower form English classes.

It was a pretty busy year. We had several exchange students come from Uganda, from Makerere University, African students. One was a Bagandese, a Baganda, the other was, I believe, someone from Toro. And we had a very, they stayed with me in my teacher's house and we had a very productive term working with these fine young men to prep them for, for teaching in secondary school and moving on with their higher degrees. The second term of the second year, an English teacher came. He would be my eventual replacement. He had just finished his work at Oxford at that point. Being a veteran in the system, he seemed very wet behind the ears. He moved into my house and we became housemates and developed a very, very good friendship.

Years later, I came back. David Hill had. So basically I transitioned to David Hill over the latter part of the year. David stayed on another year and then transferred to Kamusinga, a Quaker school north of us, quite a bit north of us, higher up on the mountain. English and American Quakers are running the school, and it was a more collegial atmosphere for him. And a number of years later, when I returned to the area, he was still there. He had taken my dog off my hands, and my dog was then with him at his place in Kamusinga.

And finally the year came to an end and I packaged my various things, put them in a crate, sent them by train on to Nairobi, from which the Peace Corps office forwarded them to my home address. We had a wonderful series of parties and speeches and dinners to say goodbye not only to me, but to the graduating class of that year. And we had the senior graduating class event in the new library, which was attached to the bath house at Kibabii at the time, and where all of the many, many books we had been able to acquire over the two years were housed. It was a very, very nice facility, very conducive to study and quiet. And we had an absolutely wonderful, wonderful farewell dinner there, just the brothers and the lay teachers.

I gave a talk, harkened back to some of the literature in the curriculum that we used and the whole notion of farewell, but not really goodbye, that we would all meet again some other time. And if not, at least we'd, there'd be a shared spirit of Uhuru as we all moved on with our lives. A wonderful event. Had a big party at my house for all of the people, lay people in the community that I had gotten to know, the mistresses at the school, teachers at the surrounding public school, rather primary schools that I had gotten to know very well. And we played music. The brothers from the, from Kibabii school came over and joined us for quite a while. And then as the music got more intensive and the dancing began, they left.

And we basically danced into the wee hours of the night until the lamps began to run out of fuel and people had to get home because many had to walk in the dark through the countryside to get back to their farms and their homes. Speeches were made. And a wonderful fellow, John Mesahalia, another person, a victim of polio, and a headmaster at a primary school nearby, gave a wonderful speech in which he described to everybody the significance it was to have a Peace Corps volunteer in their midst, someone who went out and mix with people, went to events, etcetera. And they presented me with a very beautiful four legged Bukusu stool that had been made very ornate, or maridati in Swahili, with beads. Something I keep to this day and very much treasure.

And as the students left the campus and we all said goodbye, exchanged addresses, etcetera. Shortly after I was driven down to catch the night train in Bungoma, about, Bungoma. Excuse me. And headed down to Nairobi. We had debriefing meetings in Nairobi and, sorry. And we went from Nairobi to Mombasa where we had a debriefing session before heading off in our many different directions. I got a Cook's travel ticket to try and cover as much of the North Africa and the Mideast as I could and then cross Europe on the way back. On this trip back, Jackie Schwartz, my neighbor at Misikhu School, joined me in Ethiopia, and from there we traveled together down the Nile with a couple of other Peace Corps people from Malawi, as I remember.

And reached Cairo, Egypt, where we were joined by a returned volunteer from our group, Rose Levine, who later married a fellow and became Rose Levine Levinson. She was a very dear friend of Bob Klein, and she had been with Bob Klein in West Africa, having left Kenya, after leaving Kenya, and from there flew to Cairo, where she teamed up with us. And we did Egypt and then crossed, uh, flew into Amman, Jordan. And from Amman we took a bus across the border into Israel at the time, to Jerusalem rather, and which was at that point Arab held. This is in 196-, late '66, 1967, shortly before the Seven Day War, Six Day War. And we basically did Jerusalem together.

Rose is a very interesting, very interesting person of Jewish background from New York. And we experienced the Holy Land together. And then we crossed the Montalban Gate carrying all of our things. It was a very tense time because the war was building. And stayed in Tel Aviv. Jackie and Rose left. We said goodbye. I flew on to Europe by way of Turkey and Beirut to continue my tour and eventually get back to the U.S. to begin graduate students at Binghamton University. I heard somewhere along the line that I had been offered a teaching fellowship, so I had some money available for me when I got back. Rose and Jackie decided to take a longer, a longer time in Israel, and they went to a kibbutz somewhere in the western part of the country and spent quite a bit of time apparently there.

I got postcards from them and basically we lost touch for quite a while as we all got busy with our reentry to America and Rose went on to do a PhD. Jackie went on to work in New York, work in several places, develop computer skills as that became an essential tool in your toolbox, and became very involved in India, working and staying at an ashram. I forgotten where, but very interesting life as well. And we have all basically kept in touch in latter years, thanks to the Peace Corps office and facilities that have been made available to us through the National Peace Corps Association.

So, Wendy, I think to wrap up. In terms of the, of the three goals of the Peace Corps, I would say definitely our generation of Peace Corps provided an essential expertise and skill at a time when the colonial, the colonial system was being phased out. We basically, over the next decade or so, educated the next generation of teachers at all levels in Kenya. And of course, today, as I reconnect with former students whenever I can when I go to Kenya. But also many have come to the States. It's now a third, fourth, fifth generation of teaching people, many of whom got their starts, the first degrees, the first higher teachers training credentials and so on, were jump started during those early Peace Corps years.

So it was a very, very satisfying kind of thing to follow over the years and to know that we did have a definite impact. Today our kind of teacher is less needed, the, uh, the initial graduate from an American college with a liberal arts degree. Today, more and more the high technical degrees are appreciated, although I think there's still remain many, many broadly educated young graduates and fresh graduates from university going to a place like Kenya and all over the world.

I was visiting the Kenyan ambassador in Washington at one point and that was Ambassador Nzibo, a very wonderful fellow toward the latter years of, of the dictator Moi's administration. I was president of Friends of Kenya at the time, one of the regional friends groups. And we were having a big reception in Washington, D.C. Ambassador Nzibo had offered his residence to hold the event. We had a very good turnout, I must say, and went into chat with him during one of my business trips to Washington and got acquainted. And he brought in several staff members, lined them up, and each one explained to me that they had their start, their academic start, having been taught and mentored by Peace Corps volunteers. He was very proud of that and they were all very proud. And many of them asked me if I knew of other volunteers returned now to the States. But it was a very enjoyable and satisfying thing to see. Years, decades later, the Peace Corps name and the Peace Corps contribution was still active, still productive, and highly appreciated.

Toward the end of the Moi administration of Kenya, I had remained the president of Friends of Kenya for probably about eight years, seven or eight years in any case. And as he was winding down, he came, I met him in Nairobi. I went to State House and had a formal visit with him, gave him a Friends of Kenya silver medallion. We chatted for a while, and he was extremely anxious at that point. His Minister of Foreign Affairs came in and joined us, and he sort of asked me as a consultant in a sense, what he should do to improve his image. I did share with him the program that the Carter Center had, has in Nairobi, where former heads of state become an elite executive think tank, and their years and years of expertise continue to provide service in the developing world and elsewhere. And he seemed very interested in that.

About six months later, as the political climate was radically changing and it was his last, uh, his last year in office I believe, he came to the States. There was a new ambassador at that point, and I got an invitation to a reception being held for notables in the States that his staff felt he should meet, which was quite an honor. And but before the reception, I was asked in for a private audience with the ambassador and with President Moi, at which point he asked me to do some critique of, of their approach to PR in the States and so on, which I did. And it was a pretty honest assessment of how I saw the situation and its pros and its cons. Moi was very gracious about this. I was a little uncomfortable that I might ruffle some feathers or actually cause him to become annoyed, but it did not turn out that way.

And then the floodgates opened and in came the many American well-wishers, people who had worked in Kenya. There were some military people there, and also a number of well-to-do travelers who had had a chance to meet with the president while they were touring Kenya. So I think that was an interesting opportunity, in a sense bringing back home. But, but bridging between Kenya and the U.S. in the latter, the latter part of, of Moi's administration.

As far as the second goal of Peace Corps, bringing better understanding to my own country from the Kenyan experience. This has been done in many ways. I've worked with the National Peace Corps Association, taught and spoke at schools during, there's a special Peace Corps teaching week, and have certainly mentioned my Peace Corps credential during my career as I moved from out of an academic career into a public relations and fundraising career. And quite often it's been a positive credential and a door opener and an opportunity to build rapport with people.

As I moved back into the international field, the international health field, my long and continuing connection with Kenya and other parts of Africa has certainly stood me well, as well as the South African, the years I spent in South Africa doing research with an NSF grant. A little sidebar to that. Jason Carter, who just ran unsuccessfully for governor of Georgia, and I have an ongoing relationship. He wrote a beautiful little introductory piece in the book I wrote about South Africa, the title being The King History Forgot about the king Makikele Malatji, a late 18th, early 19th century ruler of the Phalaborwa area.

And I had Jason come down to our MAP International headquarters in Brunswick, Georgia, at one point, actually on Saint Simons Island, and had him speak shortly after his return as a Peace Corps volunteer, to speak about his Peace Corps experiences to a full several hundred people at a major donor banquet that we have or did have at that time every year. And he received excellent reviews. And his book had just come out about his Peace Corps experiences. So I think we've been able to, to amply help people better understand the value of the Peace Corps program and people going to various countries and areas on a 1-to-1 basis with a certain expertise to make friends and contribute in one way or another to the development of those areas.

And with those kinds of things, I guess the third goal, of promoting better understanding between peoples and host country nationals and other people in Africa and other parts of the world about America. And I think it's been a positive, open ended, honest appraisal over the years as things have evolved and changed. And I had a recent correspondence and exchange of emails with Dr. Simiyu Wandibba about the recent publicity, negative publicity connected with the terrible massacre of people at the Westgate Shopping Center, and then the follow up problems with some of the Somali issues and talked and exchanged at length about the impact this has through the American press.

And he and I hope to get together my next trip to Nairobi. We have talked about collaborating on a joint book at some point connected with the British destruction of the Bukusu and Tachoni walled villages in western Kenya. Both of us have written professional things about this, and we, we've discussed and shared a lot of information since the sixties and seventies, when we, when we worked together a little bit. He finished a PhD, I may have mentioned this earlier, at a UK university and has distinguished himself as an anthropologist at the University of Nairobi and has educated many generations of Kenyans now to take on leadership roles and particularly in the field of education.

So I think all three goals have been accomplished. Always much more to do, of course. And in the tradition of Margaret Mead, I will continue going back to my people, to my field people, to the people where I was a Peace Corps volunteer. Continue to observe, record, study, comment, and hopefully continue to build understanding.

There may be one last comment. What was the impact of the Peace Corps on me? And I think it had an enormous impact. It still does. I've kept in touch with generations of Peace Corps volunteers through the various regional Peace Corps alumni associations, as I might say, returned Peace Corps volunteer groups. It's been very, very productive, an opportunity to keep current, particularly on development issues in many parts of the world that I might not otherwise have, uh, have been current on. The publications and materials from the National Peace Corps Association are excellent. Worldview is just an outstanding information piece that has been published for many, many years.

When I left the University of Missouri to join the Peace Corps, my intention was to return to the Missouri School of Law, where I had done some preliminary legal studies as an undergraduate, and to pursue a legal career or at some other university. However, the Kenyan experience somewhat turned my head, having gotten somewhat in-depth and involved in ethnographic work in western Kenya, particularly the Bukusu fort sites that, and basically coming back fairly, fairly short of funds. The Binghamton University had a program to attract returned Peace Corps volunteers to the anthropology department, and I did get a nice teaching assistantship to keep me going. And still had the intention of possibly doing an MA and then going on to law school.

But I instead continued on to complete a PhD in anthropology and over the years specialized in the medical anthropology field, although I'm a general ethnologist. And so it really turned my, turned my glance in another direction, and a direction I have always been happy I've taken, since it's led me into the development work. And I think I've had a significant impact in terms of generating funding for important programs, along with being involved in disease eradication of various types, such nasties as guinea worm in Africa, and very involved in the antimalarial programs in Africa and elsewhere. The big one was HIV AIDS, of course, where programs that we were able to model, test, and then apply broadly, adapted culturally for various areas are still going strong.

One of the other little known nasties is buruli ulcer that I've gotten involved in in East Africa. The guinea worm eradication of the Carter Center, I've had a fairly consistent role in that through MAP International. That's now wrapping up and we hope soon there will be no guinea worm left on the face of the earth. So these are, these were outgrowths of my Peace Corps experience and a sensitivity, a sense, a sensitization for the needs of people in Africa and other parts of the developing world.

I continue to do some consulting with MAP International and, in fact, just had a meeting today, this morning, with a new representative in the Northeast and with a hand in some of the programing and staffing of programs, particularly in East Africa, which MAP International, which I've been associated with for almost 20 years, has evolved significantly over the, over the decades to. A part of my charge when I joined MAP was to nationalize and regionalize the staff, many of whom were still expats, and to build the board to be more reflective of the people it serves. There are Kenyans on the board now. There are regional boards, advisory boards. All of this making for a more effective not-for-profit development agency. So that's rather exciting.

Was, had a hand in the President Bush's PEPFAR program, procuring and making available through MAP International HIV related meds. And that has evolved and taken many twists and turns. But it was something I very much enjoyed doing and will keep my hand in this particular type of health work, HIV AIDS, until it's no longer a significant crisis in Kenya and Africa and the world, something I hope to see end or be totally controlled in my lifetime.

I plan to keep involved with the returned Peace Corps volunteer agencies, wherever I might be. I plan to keep in touch with my students who are now, like me, grandfathers and retiring and that sort of thing. I'd like to do more writing along with the Kenya novel. Hopefully that will get done in a couple of years. It takes me a while to do these things. And we have a very large East African community here in Atlanta, as there are in many major cities. I've been, again, in touch with that community. They have a very large church here. It's the East African Community Church that was once in an unused Presbyterian church. It's now got its own facility.

The presiding bishop of Kenya, Zebulon Mutamburi, has been a guest in my home many, many times. And he has been a champion of the new constitution in Kenya and was my most cooperative and I think a real catalyst for the HIV faith-based initiative that we developed and launched in Kenya and elsewhere in Kenya. And he and his wife are still in touch. And I expect they'll be back here stopping off to do work at Emory University and my house guests in the future.

And I hope my children and my grandchildren and others associated with them are able to appreciate the great things happening in Kenya and other parts of Africa these days, and recognize that continent and many other places as important partners in the future for our own country and economy and, and, and ideas about things.

I've been working with the local High Museum here in Atlanta as well. I've given them several works of art that I collected during my Peace Corps days. A beautiful wood sculpture that they seem very interested in. They're looking at my Flora clay pieces. Flora was a Teso woman, I believe she's now deceased, who had learned, who was spotted by a Dutch priest making beautiful figurines alongside a, in a clay deposit alongside a river in Bukusu. And he taught her how to fire and some of the technologies of this. And she started a business, a very talented sculptress. And I have several beautiful pieces I got, several were gifts, others I bought when I went out to visit her, her shamba in Teso, which is west of Bukusu and on the fringe of Bukusu.

And they are now collector's pieces and the High is looking at them, and several other Kenyan pieces, including a Tiriki circumcision mask that I was given in Bukusu when a group of Tiriki young men came through during their circumcision ceremony to dance for their cousins in Bukusu. And John Mesahalia, the principal of one of the primary schools, happened to have access to one and it was given to me. And the High may have that in their, their collection at some point. They've expressed some interest. And a few pieces like that. So culturally, I'm going to try and build some visibility in the arts for Kenya. I also have a fairly extensive, about 15 pieces of the Kenyan self-taught artist Ancent Soi in my collection here.

And they, a number of museums have expressed some interest in them. One is in a Maine museum, a major opus that he did for me and sent to me at a time when he was having trouble meeting his, his children's school fees. And others I bought over a period of 30 years, basically, over more than 30 years. I have the evolution of his work. I'm hoping to find a home for that, hopefully intact, the entire collection intact, that will show the development of a very talented Kenyan over, over a very. [tape break]

This is side two of tape two. Just wrapping up. Robert Scully, a returned Peace Corps volunteer from 1964 to 1966, Kenya education group number one. Just wrapping up on Ancent Soi. I'm trying to get his work in a permanent collection somewhere in the States, again, to, to show to Americans this magnificent artist's work. And in retirement, I'm hoping to travel a little bit more, go back to Kenya on a number of occasions. My wife and I are hoping to do a pleasure trip there shortly, but I will always block out time to go back to the Bukusu area, meet my former students, meet their families, their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and to discuss issues, take photographs, and keep in touch.