Scott King Oral History Interview
Interviewer(s): Evelyn Ganzglass
Interviewee(s): Scott King

Evelyn Ganzglass: This is Evelyn Ganzglass. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Somalia from 1966 to 1968. Today is August 24, 2018, and I'm interviewing Scott King, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chad from 1970 to 1971. So, Scott, why did you join the Peace Corps?

Scott King: I had met, in 1960 I had met John Kennedy. I was 11 years old.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Wow.

Scott King: And I stood for hours in the rain in a little gas station in southern West Virginia, waiting for him to come through on a campaign stop. And he had become at 11 my hero to the point that I became somewhat obsessed and aggravated everyone with all the Kennedy stories, even at that age that I would tell. So it was really, I guess, natural. An interest in the world. I grew up in southern West Virginia coal mining town. We didn't travel a lot. And I dreamed of being places all around the world. So it was a combination of the two.

Evelyn Ganzglass: That's great. Did you pursue international issues in school?

Scott King: Somewhat.

Evelyn Ganzglass: What did you?

Scott King: My history, my background was history and then the geography.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did you go to college?

Scott King: Yes. Graduated West Virginia University with a degree in history, minor in geography, sociology and something else I don't remember. But yeah, then I did two years of graduate work at University of Akron in geography, and that was post Peace Corps. And I was there on a fellowship that I received because of my Peace Corps experience.

Evelyn Ganzglass: You might as well, so just talk about that. What kind of a fellowship did you get?

Scott King: Well, it was a graduate assistantship in the geography department at the University of Akron, and it paid everything, all my expenses for two years.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, really? Wow.

Scott King: And the reason I received it was they had a professor who was interested in African studies and needed a graduate student with some experience in Africa.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So we'll circle back to that afterwards. So from age 11, you wanted to join the Peace Corps.

Scott King: Well, it wasn't. No, I receptive to. And I was wanting to before it was even there.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So how did you find out about the Peace Corps?

Scott King: Well, there was no recruiter in West Virginia. Surprise, surprise. There was a tear off coupon, maybe, or a sheet or something on a bulletin board. And that was it.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And this was after college?

Scott King: In college, in college, my senior year, I'm thinking, what am I going to do? And it appears on the bulletin board and actually I did not meet anyone connected with Peace Corps until my orientation. My interviews were done by phone.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you just saw on an ad on the bulletin board?

Scott King: On the bulletin board, yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Kind of passive outreach, one could say. What did your friends think about you joining the Peace Corps?

Scott King: I don't remember anyone thinking it was a bad idea. No one really wanted to try it themselves.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did they think you were crazy?

Scott King: My mother did.

Evelyn Ganzglass: That was my next question. What your parents thought about this?

Scott King: Yeah, my mother tried to bribe me. She said they would, my parents would pay for grad school if I would just go and not go to Africa. A lot of tears on her part.

Evelyn Ganzglass: What were they afraid of?

Scott King: I don't know. Just the fact that I was so far away from home.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So are you an only child?

Scott King: No, the oldest of five. So there are plenty of others to occupy her.

Evelyn Ganzglass: But the oldest.

Scott King: The first to leave.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Ok, so you, you saw this ad, you applied and how long was it before you heard from Peace Corps?

Scott King: You know, I'm not sure. I know I probably before Christmas applied and I'd almost forgotten about it, and I get a phone call or a letter saying someone will be calling you. I don't remember. It may have been a letter or a postcard that says, we like to do an interview with you on the phone. Just so they knew, I knew that somebody would be calling me.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Do you have any recollection of what the interview covered?

Scott King: No.

Evelyn Ganzglass: OK. So you were selected?

Scott King: I was selected.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did they immediately assign you to Chad?

Scott King: I had asked for something in the Pacific, which is why they put me in the middle of Africa as far from the ocean as you could be. I was a little disappointed. But then I got excited about it.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Had you ever heard about Chad?

Scott King: No. No.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you had to go and look at an atlas, but you were a geographer, so.

Scott King: Yes, well, I knew a little bit about African geography and had had a at least one African history course, but no mention of Chad in it. Lake Chad, maybe because of the caravans pass through, but no.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Ok, so you got the letter assigned to Chad. Where did you meet with the rest of the group? This was 1970.

Scott King: 1970. We had a training orientation in Philadelphia for a week. Yeah, that's when they checked if your eyes were, if you needed new glasses, you got glasses. We were told to have all of our fillings replaced before we arrived and they were checked by a dentist and redone if they needed to be. And one of the dentists they sent people to required everyone to have their wisdom teeth pulled. So I was very lucky I didn't get that dentist. And we started our inoculations. Of course there was, there were sessions we went to and there's still plenty of time to enjoy Philadelphia.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And how many people came to training? How big was your group?

Scott King: A hundred and something. It was Francophone Africa, everything from Senegal to Chad and Cameroon.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, so it was not just for Chad.

Scott King: No, we went after a week. We took the buses. We took buses up to northern New York and to Quebec, arriving on the twenty fourth of June, John the Baptist Day, which is a holiday in Quebec. And we went to a little town east of Quebec City on the St. Lawrence, Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatiere. And we occupied their school there, boarding school of some type, up on the hill, looking out onto the river. Beautiful little town. No one would speak English. They knew English. They being classic che ve qu'à. You had to twist their arms to get an English word out of some of them.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you went up to Quebec to learn French.

Scott King: To learn French, we did a little African culture and we had a teacher education.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, so you did all of your training all up in Quebec?

Scott King: Almost all. We were there until sometime in August. Then we flew to.

Evelyn Ganzglass: March. So April, May, June.

Scott King: No, this is June.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, June. So it's three months.

Scott King: June, all July and the first of August. Part of June. Two months. Then we went from Quebec to different destinations in West Africa. There were 13 of us went to Chad and I don't know how many went to Niger, but we went to the capital of Niger, Niamey, and did a three week training session. Therefore, we were doing teaching the little summer school with the students there.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Let's spend a little more time on training. Did you think the language training was good? Did you learn French?

Scott King: I struggled. I struggled with my French. Although I'd had it in high school and in college, it was still difficult. However, when I got to Chad, I found that my level of French was about the same as most of the Chadians. We could communicate a whole lot better than either of us could communicate with the French that were there.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So because you were at the very basic level.

Scott King: Yeah, we knew, we understood each other. Yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: That's interesting. And what was the teacher training program like?

Scott King: It was very effective. It was very effective. And I had almost done my education program as an undergraduate. So I'd had the basics, everything except teacher student teaching. And they brought in these really cute little kids from the town. Delightful, charming Quebecois. And we were supposed to be really militant with them. Real stern, make them march in stand until everyone was ready to be seated, and they would have to stand to ask you a question. And of course, we had. Once we started doing our presentations, there would be a committee in the back of the other people who were in that training group who would critique, along with the instructor, the other potential volunteers. But the other candidates were back to critiquing us. And then after class, they would go through it. So it was it was really very good.

Evelyn Ganzglass: But why? Why did you have to be so strict? Was that preparing you for West Africa?

Scott King: You know, I'm not real sure exactly why the strictness, except when we get to the school, they're college students in and around. In Chad, where I was, the middle school, most of the teachers there were ex-pat French. I think there are one or two militaire who are doing the teaching in lieu of military service in France. There were two African teachers, although they weren't Chadians, and me. And I quickly learned that the less I had to do with the French teachers, a happier I would be. I thought of them as the scum of French society. These were people who, the director of the school carried a metal pipe. And if you thought a student was misbehaving in your classroom, he had them stand and beat them. He also beat his wife. You know, these weren't really nice people.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Wow.

They could come there, the former colony, and they were literally the big fish in a small pond.

Yeah, and they had been there from colonial time on?

Scott King: Quite possibly, yeah. You know, this is only the first decade of independence there in Chad.

Evelyn Ganzglass: I was going to ask, so it's soon after independence?

Scott King: Soon after independence.

Evelyn Ganzglass: '64 or '65, maybe. Now you were there in '70.

Scott King: I was there in 1970. Independence, I think, was '61 or '62. I don't remember right now, but I do recall going to the post office and you could see where the clock had hung on the wall when the French ran the country and when they pulled out, they took the clock off the wall and you could see where it had been because they had painted around it instead of taking it off to paint.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Just let's go back to training for a moment. What was the cross-cultural training like?

Scott King: Some of it was taught by our PCVs. They brought a few host country nationals over to talk with us, just trying to get us acquainted or accustomed to some of the things that we would be confronted with or confronted this not really confrontation that we would encounter.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did it prepare you for Chad?

Scott King: I think so. Although it takes a little while to get used to some of the nudity, even though you may be very open minded, it's kind of hard.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Well, what kind of nudity?

Scott King: Women would most of the time be topless. There were still villages I passed through them on a little moped where they would wear grass skirts and one or two villages I went through where all they wore was one string of beads, and I was trying to figure out the difference between the male and female beads. That's my sociology background, I guess. So we still encountered that at that time.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Huh. And the men, what did the men wear?

Scott King: The men wore, in most of the villages, would wear the shorts and a western shirt. A lot of clothing that came out of. Apparently, when clothes were donated, I don't know if it still happens, but when clothes were donated, they were shipped to the West Coast. A trucker would go and pick up a load and bring it back and sell it at very low cost, but to cover his cost inland. So a lot of the clothing we saw was the stuff that came from the U.S.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Yeah, I think that's still going on in lots of countries. Yeah. There's a famous book called The Life of a T-shirt. Something like that. So you finished your training up in Quebec, and did you then fly directly from there?

Scott King: We flew from Montreal to New York City, had a weekend off, which was an experience for someone who'd never been to New York before. One of the guys in the group said he knew an inexpensive hotel just happened to be somewhere between Chinatown and Harlem.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And it's a long distance from Chinatown to Harlem.

Scott King: It was a transition area. You had a large black American community and you still had some Chinese shops. But I do remember is the noise scared me so much. Glass breaking and the shouting, whatever. At some point during the night, I got up and moved the dresser over in front of the hotel room door. And the next morning I got the phone book out and started looking for anyone I had known in college who lived in New York to come and get me.

Evelyn Ganzglass: It was that bad?

Scott King: It was that bad. Of course, you're talking about a guy who lived a very sheltered existence in this small town in West Virginia, you know.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So that was your first cross-cultural experience.

Scott King: That was, oh, that was a big cross-cultural experience.

Evelyn Ganzglass: More so than Canada and French?

Scott King: Yes. I felt safe in Canada. I didn't feel so safe there.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did the other volunteers feel that way as well, or was it?

Scott King: That stayed there in the hotel? I'm the one that left. I'm the one that left.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Good. So then you hopped on a plane and how did you get to Chad?

Scott King: Actually, we hopped on several planes before we could actually leave the airport. This was when the jumbo jets were just coming out and I've lost track. We were supposed to have left at 6:30 in the evening on a Sunday, and I think it was like 3:00 or 4:00 Monday morning. It was a whole series of problems. Something was wrong. They were waiting for a part to come. They sent the wrong part. They put us on a plane at least twice. At one point it was they had to wait on a new flight crew to come because the other crew had been on too long. They took us off, put us on, took us off, gave everyone free drinks. We got a dinner and we got another dinner on the plane. Free drinks across the ocean. And we were late arriving in Brussels. And the next flight from Brussels to Niamey was a week later. So the airline sent us to Paris for the night, and that was a nice experience. We boarded Air Afrique the next day and started our flight across the Mediterranean and the Sahara to.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So instead of staying in Brussels, you then.

Scott King: We weren't to stay in Brussels. We were supposed to be flying.

Evelyn Ganzglass: But you flew to.

Scott King: Yeah, instead of spending a week in Brussels for another plane to come. It was much cheaper just to send us to Paris.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you got New York, so you got from West Virginia to Canada to New York to Paris.

Scott King: By way of Brussels.

Evelyn Ganzglass: By way of Brussels.

Scott King: Next stop was Niamey, Niger. Yes. Beautiful flying over. Niger in French.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Ah, but you are going to Chad. Why did you fly into Niger?

Scott King: We were doing combined through training.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, I see.

Scott King: Yes. At the lycée national in Niamey, the national high school.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And so that was still combined training for Chad and the group that was going to Niger.

Scott King: That state of Niger. Yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Yes. And how long did that training last?

Scott King: Three weeks. I remember that one, three weeks. So we had gone from one hundred and some people down to roughly 26 to 30. And after three weeks, we were down to 13 and then the next step was down to two going on the same plane together. Yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So wait, 13 ended up going to Chad.

Scott King: To Chad. We spent a few days at Fort Lamy, which is in N'Djamena, the capital. And then they started putting us on flights out to our destinations.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Let's just go back to Niger for the moment. So you've been exposed to all kinds of new things. What was your impression of Niger?

Scott King: Well, my first impression of Niger. Oh, this is after flying over the desert and looking down and seeing the oasis with the palm trees. I mean, the flight was low enough that we could see everything, but we get to. Oh, this is a good one. We get to Niamey and we're circling the airport at a capital city. And I look down and all I saw was grass huts and I'm thinking, oh Lord, you know, if this is the capital and it's nothing but grass huts, what have I got myself into? And the flight had been very comfortable. Great food. They kept us hydrated. You know, ice water anytime we wanted it. Got up and this was before all the, you know, you had to go down the steps onto the tarmac. Got halfway through the cabin to the exit and it was like an anvil swung down and hit me in the face. It was the humidity, the heat and humidity just. And I at that point, I remember thinking, what would happen if I just went back to my seat? Because that was when it scared me. It was a combination of the grass huts and that humidity. Yeah. But then we get to the high school and they had two dorms, one for the female and one for the male volunteers, and they had miscommunicated how many people were coming. So we had a shortage of mosquito nets, and I don't know how we decided who got them and who didn't, but I did not get mosquito nets, a mosquito net that night and the next day I had to go to the doctor because my right arm was swollen so bad I couldn't bend my fingers from the mosquito bites.

Evelyn Ganzglass: That was a great introduction.

Scott King: It was a great, oh yes, my first 36 hours were really a challenge.

Evelyn Ganzglass: You're ready to hop back on the plane.

Scott King: Well, at that point, I don't know how long I would have waited for a flight. So no, I survived it. I survived it. The teaching was good. I enjoyed that three weeks there. We were starting to feel like we knew what we were doing. The staff was very supportive. I did a little business venture there. We had, the embassy had sent over, the American embassy had sent over a refrigerator for us to use. And we were a little distance out from the bars and anything else. So getting even soft drinks was a little bit of a task to get there and back. And I decided we would form a co-op. And each person put in one hundred francs or whatever, it was, maybe two hundred. And we hired the custodian to walk in and get the fuel for the refrigerator and buy the soft drinks by the case and we set it up as an honor system. So you had the cold drinks there. You put your money in. We ended up making like 700 percent profit after three weeks. We had the convenience of the drinks, so everyone got their initial investment back, plus the profit and the convenience of having the drinks there. I'm always good at making money for other people, never for myself.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So why did you charge so much for the drinks?

Scott King: Oh no, we were competitive.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, other people, it wasn't just for yourself.

Scott King: Oh no, no, no. Everyone, even including the investors, had to pay for their drinks when they bought them. Yeah. And we priced them the same as if you're going into town. We didn't charge you any extra for the convenience, no. And still made money on it.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Well, that's a good way to start.

Scott King: I remember the breakfast there more than any meal. We had long tables out under the trees there at the school, and the kitchen staff would bring out the coffee. The two pitchers of the hot milk and the coffee pouring them simultaneously into the cup and the bread it was.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Very French?

Scott King: Very French, very French.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did you understand their French in Niger?

Scott King: As well as you would in Chad, yes, it was acceptable. Niamey was an interesting city. They have had maybe still have a very nice outdoor museum kind of patterned a little bit like Williamsburg, Virginia. And they had sample villages from each of the tribes brought there. They had music exhibits, they had other exhibits, and I took one of my classes on a field trip and took them down to the museum. They had to speak English the whole time, but it was fun and there were some nice restaurants there. It was a nice. I can't remember anything after the first night there with no mosquito net. I can't remember anything that was negative about being there.

Evelyn Ganzglass: It's great. Presumably you got a mosquito net?

Scott King: Yes, yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So after three weeks, the 13 of you then?

Scott King: We got on a plane. We flew to Douala, Cameroon, on the coast, spent the night there, had a hotel with a balcony facing the Atlantic Ocean, just a block or two from the water and had a nice evening there. Then we started. We flew from Douala to Yaoundé, the capital on the interior, and then two more flights going north in Cameroon to Marawa Garoua. The airport at Garoua, the last place in Cameroon we landed at, was a grass runway and the terminal was a sheet of metal, four poles holding it up, and a wooden bench. And that was an international airport. I remember that one, particularly because I was having stomach issues and was in the restroom in the back of the plane when we landed. And I felt like it was the end of the world. Yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: But so from Nigeria, you went to Cameroon before Chad. Why is that?

Scott King: There were no direct flights from Niger to Chad although they are adjoining countries.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And that, was that because of bad political relations?

Scott King: No, no. Just economics, I guess. There weren't that many people wanting to go from Chad to Niger.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Ok, so you went to Cameroon for one night basically.

Scott King: We spent a night there on the coast and then the next day, traveling from airport to airport to airport to finally to Chad.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And what is? I should know this, but what is the capital of Chad?

Scott King: It used to be Fort Lamy, L-A-M-Y, and now it's N'Djamena N-D-J-A-M-E-N-A if I'm spelling it correctly.

Evelyn Ganzglass: All right. So you get to Fort Lamy?

Scott King: Yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And then what happens by this time? Have you gotten used to the heat?

Scott King: Yes. Somewhat, somewhat.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Then what happened when you got to?

Scott King: We had a couple of days in the capital and I don't really there's nothing that stands out. Probably more shots. We met with the Peace Corps staff. Maybe talk to some people from the embassy that kind of just the administrative things, and then they started getting travel arrangements for us and.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Where were you assigned?

Scott King: I was assigned to the village of Doba, D-O-B-A, in the southern part of the country.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And were you the only one going to that post or was there somebody else?

Scott King: I was the only one going to that post, yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And were other people going single singly as well?

Scott King: There weren't. I didn't know very many people who were in a city with another volunteer, whether it was teaching or anything. Yeah, the norm was single.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So we still had the 13 who came to the capital.

Scott King: Yes, and when we got on the plane, there were two of us. No, I think there were three or four that went to Mondou, which I think is still Mondou, M-O-U-N-D-O-U [sic], the airport closest to Doba. One was staying there and he had a housemate that was already there. We were able to stay with him until transportation can be arranged. This is end of August. And in the rainy season and at that time, Chad had no paved highways outside the capital city. So it was all sand and dirt, and there are barriers set up at the end of the city that you couldn't leave. They had one grader for the whole country.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Because it was too muddy?

Scott King: Too muddy. Yeah, and I would go down. I and one other volunteer would go down together and check out the situation each day until we could finally get on a truck and go. And finally, that happened. He made it to Doba with me and had to wait another day or two before he could get to his.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So he went even further.

Scott King: He went even further. So I'd gone from a hundred and something down to the roughly 30 to the 13 to five of us. Now it's two. And it was I was a little anxious when my friend left finally because I was on my own for the first time.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Talk about what happened then.

Scott King: No one spoke English. They were two missionaries that I found out about who were maybe 10 kilometers out of town, one from Canada and one from Australia, and they had the goodies for my house. My predecessor had been evicted, kicked out. He had committed broken a social taboo, and besides teaching, he had gotten involved with chicken raising and was trying to convince the men to fence the chickens and to feed them. And the governor got very upset about it because raising chickens is women's work. So while my predecessor was on vacation, the police were sent in and took all of his possessions, dumped them in the road and padlocked the house. And the missionaries happened to hear about it and went and picked up what they could to salvage for him. We were left with a list of, I guess, is fairly standard. There was a list of what was left for us. A house supplies, books, things like that on the inventory. So we knew what to expect when we got there.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And he just never went back to his post?

Scott King: I don't know exactly what happened to him. He wasn't permitted to go back. I don't know if they reassigned him or they sent him back? But there had been a gap.

Evelyn Ganzglass: All right. So you went and retrieved whatever it was and you moved back into the same house.

Scott King: I don't know if it's the same house or not. But French teachers lived in the compound with a fence around it and a generator, and the rest of us were. Not all the French, the militaire there were outside the compound. The two African teachers who I think were from Cameroon and I had houses outside, but within easy walking distance.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did you have electricity?

Scott King: No.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Do you have water in the house?

Scott King: When the guards brought prisoners to fill the water tank, yes. Twice a week, the police would bring prisoners with their rifles and had them haul water from the well. And I had a tank on top of a column to the back of the house and they would pour the water in there. Ladder, sitting them up, and no one was ever shot. But no running water. My refrigerator operated to some extent. It was kerosene powered, or gasoline powered, maybe gasoline. I have been told that sometimes when they start to not cool, the best thing to do is put them in the back of the truck and have someone drive them up and down the dirt roads to bounce them. I hired a houseboy, which was fairly easy to do.

Evelyn Ganzglass: The houseboy went shopping for you?

Scott King: He went shopping because he'd get better prices that I could in the market. Europeans would have to pay more. He took care of my laundry for me, came in the morning to fix me an egg and bread or whatever and clean the house, did cooking for lunch. And would come back in the evening to light my lanterns for me and any small meal, salad or an egg or whatever. I fixed that.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you get there, you're set, and then when does school start or had school started already?

Scott King: No, no, no. Soon after. I didn't have much time to explore the town. I knew how to get from my house into the market. I have a little moped, which I guess was fairly standard at that point. And you actually get pump gas in town, which meant you actually pumped. You would pump a handle to get the gas up into a glass cylinder. They would check it and make sure it was full. You had a release in lower right into your drain, into your fuel tank and charge you by how many cylinders you pumped up. Yeah, interesting. My houseboy used an iron that was fueled with charcoal. You open the bottom of it and put the charcoal in, which was.

Evelyn Ganzglass: It works.

Scott King: Yeah, it worked.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Talk a little bit about the school. I know you didn't like the French teachers.

Scott King: No. There were roughly 240 or 250 students. This is the middle school right after primary and before we went, there was only one lycee that operated, I think, at least in the whole country that had the final year. Chad had a population of two or three million at that time, and they graduated 15 high school students a year.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Wow.

Scott King: They took 30 students. It was very competitive. They took 30 students, routinely graduated 15 of them.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did the students in your school have to pay?

Scott King: No.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, so it was free. It was free education.

Scott King: It was a free education except a lot of the students were two or three days away from home, and they would leave in end of August and start walking. If they were lucky, they came with a bag of grain, one, maybe two pair of shorts and a shirt or two. And you're talking about 12, 13, 14 year old kids who had to support themselves, find a place to sleep at night and food. To be able to go to school.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So there weren't dorms at school?

Scott King: No.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And paying somebody to stay at their house costs money, so were these sons of rich people?

Scott King: Like I said most, if they're lucky, came with a bag of grain and that was it. I quite often would go out and scatter garbage around my house so I could pay someone to come in. Several times I had a dog, several times my dog disappeared and mysteriously someone would bring it back, asking for a reward which I always paid. Yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you really helped the kids.

Scott King: Without being obvious. One of our students stole from the pork butcher in town. Stole meat. And the butcher caught him and cut his throat. Which was somewhat disturbing, but even more disturbing was when his family found out about his death after he had been buried and the father comes to town and felt like he was entitled to kill a student to compensate for his loss or the faculty was also and that would apply to us. So until he was persuaded by the police to leave, it was a little, little scary.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And this was, this an anomaly or do you think this is just the way it was? An eye for an eye?

Scott King: Yeah, an eye for an eye.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So. You were in the school, you showed up. Classes started. Did you just go in and start teaching your classes?

Scott King: That was it.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did you get any support?

Scott King: No, I, we taught. You know, instead of doing lesson planning American style, where you plan your lessons out for a week. There you had a carnet de text, carnet de note, a notebook or your textbook on each class you taught. You were to sit and write what you had covered that day before you left the room and that stayed in a classroom. The students stayed in the room and the teachers rotated around. So teaching a language class, using color, things, items or whatever. I would have to prepare three or four classrooms with things that I would be using for the one lesson.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Because it stayed in their classroom.

Scott King: Yes. And hope that the instructors wouldn't take it down or erase whatever I'd put up. Or, yeah, the black blackboards were an experience. They were very old, very pitied. And every classroom would have a bucket of water each morning, fresh water and a sponge. And you learn to splash water on the board to erase it. And I would go home each day with chalk dust from my knees down that had splashed back onto my pants. Yes. It's just part of the job.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Were the students prepared for middle school? What was the education level?

Scott King: They were, in most cases, very conscientious. Forty-five in a classroom. There were 12 girls in the whole school.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So it was a coed school.

Scott King: It was coed. And the reason that the 12 were there, the missionaries explained to me was that the parents could get a better price for them if they had a middle school education over just the primary school. I remember the first faculty meeting there, and there was a big debate over what part of the fence around the school we were to direct the kids to for urinating.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And that was just the way things were.

Scott King: That was the way things were, yeah. You know, of course, no meals, no sanitation.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So when did the kids eat, just before they left wherever they were living and came in?

Scott King: Yeah, we would stop school classes around noon because of the heat and the older students came back in the evening. The younger students didn't. There'd be an evening session four to six. I never taught that. School was six days a week. Teachers had a floating day off. You had Sunday plus one other day, so your schedule from day to day was never the same.

Evelyn Ganzglass: How did you get along with the other, the other teachers, I mean, who did you interact with?

Scott King: The African teachers primarily. I was polite with the French, but I didn't go there to spend time with French people.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And you spoke French with the Africans?

Scott King: Yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And did you think they were well prepared teachers?

Scott King: Yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: They had all, where had they gone to training?

Scott King: They had been college educated in Cameroon, I think. So the militaire, the ones who were there, were not as bad as the older, more established inside the compound French, but they were still.

Evelyn Ganzglass: When you say the militaire they were?

Scott King: They were teaching. It was part of the military service. Alternate service. It was the alternative to being in the foreign legion or whatever.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, and they were called militaire.

Scott King: Yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So what did you do on days off?

Scott King: Explore. Explore. Wearing my African shirt and my shorts and my pith helmet. That was one of my best gifts, one the missionaries had given me, was the old traditional pith helmet made out of cork. So in case you fell into quicksand, the pith helmet would float, they would know where to find the body.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Well, that was great.

Scott King: Yes, but it did extend on the back to cover your neck and I would love to go out running in the in the desert. I remember going into one pothole that I called the mother of all potholes because you couldn't see me from the road until I drove out the other end. Yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: It sounds very primitive at that point. How did you feel about all of this? Did you feel isolated? Or just tired maybe.

Scott King: Somewhat isolated. It was great having Voice of America to listen to the BBC. I would correct papers, do my planning at night.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you had electricity.

Scott King: I had battery powered radios, battery powered radio. Write letters. I made the mistake of not numbering my letters when I mailed them to people. Because it was quite common for the employees of the post office, once they sold you the stamp, you put it on the envelope and dropped it in the slot, to take your envelope, peel the stamp off to sell it again and throw the letter away. Chad, at that point, had no scheduled mail delivery system. Someone would stop at the post office, sign for the pouch and take it to the next city. So mail delivery was very slow.

Evelyn Ganzglass: How long did it take to get a letter from home?

Scott King: Two to three weeks.

Evelyn Ganzglass: That's not too bad.

Scott King: No. There was one phone at the post office. You could schedule international calls.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did you ever do that?

Scott King: No.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So did you see other Peace Corps volunteers periodically, or were you alone?

Scott King: From the 1st of September until Thanksgiving, I think I was on my own. We had, in southern Chad, we had a group that got together after our Thanksgiving weekend and had a nice meal together. I remember taking, riding in the back of a truck from Doba to, I don't even remember the name of the town right now, but it's changed anyway. And having to shower when I got there and the water that flowed off of me was red from the sand that covered me in the back of the truck.

Evelyn Ganzglass: I'm just wondering, so you read, you listened to the radio.

Scott King: Wrote letters, yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And you felt you felt good about your work? Did you feel good about it?

Scott King: As good as you could feel, as good as you could feel, those of us who were in the TEFL program teaching English as a foreign language felt somewhat frustrated. Because here we are with students teaching them English, knowing that the odds of them going on to finish high school are very slim, much less leaving the country. And there are so many more practical things we could have been teaching, but it was explained to us that we were the deal sweetener for the Chadian government. The Chadian government wanted English teachers because they wanted to be as much like France as possible. So if they would take us, the Peace Corps said you really need to take the health people and the well digging people, and I think there were forestry volunteers at that time. But the big focus from the government was on the English teachers. The governor introduced me to people one time in a restaurant in town as his English teacher.

Evelyn Ganzglass: As a prize.

Scott King: Yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did you travel around very much?

Scott King: Not very much. No. Travel was really, really difficult.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Was there? Were there vacations, Christmas vacation?

Scott King: Some vacations, yes. I didn't finish. By the time I left, I left early. I had problems with the water. And ended up losing 60 or 70 pounds and was having trouble holding an item. You know, my water was filtered. It was boiled and treated with iodine tablets and I still.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you basically went to the capital or did you go back home?

Scott King: I ended up coming back home, yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And because you were so sick.

Scott King: Yeah. Chad was a difficult assignment. They had a very low rate of just finishing the two years. Physical problems. Emotional problems adjusting.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Was it a welcoming community?

Scott King: I'm sorry?

Evelyn Ganzglass: Was it a welcoming community? Beyond the French teachers? Did you feel that people wanted you there?

Scott King: It took a while for them, I think, to figure out why I was different. I remember one evening walking from town. Two stories about coming in from the market. I'll do the first one. Don't let me forget to do the second, because it's a better one. And I was walking through the district, the African district, as opposed to the Muslim district. And this guy comes out of a little bar and drops to his knees. Because he thought being white in that part of town, I must be a priest, so I did the sign of the cross and blessed him and went on. He was happy and I was, yeah. My next-door neighbors lived on a porch of a house that had been left by a doctor. And the children, when they knew I was, I never figured out how they knew that I was coming into town, but when I had gone out anywhere and came into town on the truck, they would end up in the town square to greet me and carry anything that I had with me on top of their heads. It was like a little procession through back to my house, you know.

Evelyn Ganzglass: But they lived out on a porch, they didn't live in the house?

Scott King: No, they lived on the porch next door. Everything was done on the porch, in the yard. I had a little grass fence around the back of the house and they knew exactly where to stand to watch me through the window of the bathroom when I brush my teeth, which they thought was hilarious. It was that and rubbing the hair on my arms that they enjoyed.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So those were the two stories and you said in passing the African versus the Muslim part of town, but what was the setup there?

Scott King: A large part of Chad, still is, Muslim and you have the native African population.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So the Muslims are not native Africans?

Scott King: They are native Africans, but there are more North African background. And then you've got the religious difference. Three or four years in the mid-seventies, I remember picking up Newsweek magazine and reading about Doba in an article about Africa. And there had been a massacre there and all the Muslims were killed and the mosque destroyed.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did you sense that animosity when you were there?

Scott King: No, I may just not have been able to pick up on it. When we were there, there were two civil wars going on, in the north and in the east, closer to Sudan. And some of the fighting that's going back and forth has been between the sub-Saharan Africans and the Muslim Africans with the power struggle between them.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did you feel affected by that?

Scott King: The massacre?

Evelyn Ganzglass: No, uh, yes. I mean, just the ongoing wars.

Scott King: No, no, although I do remember, I was really very good with my French in case I was picked up or stopped and taken hostage. I can explain in French without failure that I was worth more alive than dead.

Evelyn Ganzglass: That's pretty funny.

Scott King: Yeah, one of one of our group, one of our 13 teachers. Fort Archambault, in the northern part of Chad, I don't know what it's called now. There was a French military base there, and they evacuated her. Picked her up at her house and took her into the fort for a couple of nights at least once while I was there because of the threat of violence.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Because she was a woman or because she was American or what?

Scott King: Because the rebels might attack the town. One of my volunteers who lived in the next town east of me was attacked one night by a teacher from her school after they've been to a bar.

Evelyn Ganzglass: This was a woman teacher?

Scott King: A female teacher, and she had to be evacuated. They were able to get a helicopter in and evacuate her. She had some, she was badly hurt.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you did feel, did you feel threatened?

Scott King: No.

Evelyn Ganzglass: You didn't feel threatened, but you had your spiel for if you were kidnapped.

Scott King: Just in case, I was worth more as a hostage, live hostage than I was dead.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Yes, that that made a lot of sense.

Scott King: Oh, we weren't really close to any of the disturbances. They were the eastern part over near Sudan and up near Libya.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And how were those? When were those resolved or are they still ongoing?

Scott King: I think it's fairly well resolved. Of course, the focus now is more toward ISIS and Boko Haram, which when they did the kidnappings in Nigeria, that's awful close to Lake Chad and the Chadian Army has been involved in hunting them down. You know, getting news from Chad is very difficult. We just don't. It's a struggle to keep up on things there.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And why is it so isolated?

Scott King: It's in the middle, it's in the middle. When I was there, it was one of the few countries in the world where you could not buy a Coca- Cola.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So it's really then and maybe now still.

Scott King: Bad infrastructure. You know, if you try to drive anywhere. Dirt roads then, I can't imagine it being a whole lot better. No railroad to Chad. No, it was isolated. One of the 10 poorest countries in the world of that time, and not much better now.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And you got sick. Where did you get medical treatment there? But was there a doctor nearby?

Scott King: No. The doctor, there was a doctor who flew in once a month.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Peace Corps doctor?

Scott King: No. Civilian. The missionaries, the missionaries, yeah, the missionaries had a baby clinic, and they were some help to me. I survived malaria. But it was systemic issues that got to me. Malaria, I just felt like if I could die, I would feel much better. It was, it was an experience.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Have you gotten over malaria?

Scott King: I haven't had it reoccur.

Evelyn Ganzglass: You've never had it reoccur?

Scott King: No.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So many people I know who've had malaria have it for their lifetime. So you're lucky.

Scott King: Yeah. When I talk with a doctor and we go through my physical and mental health history. I throw in the malaria and gives them a little, you know, along with the stomach issues.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So how did you end up leaving? I mean, who decided you were sick enough to leave?

Scott King: It was consultation with the doctors in the capital, the Peace Corps doctor there.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And then the Peace Corps decided that you were too sick.

Scott King: They didn't resist. When I told them that, you know, there was no effort to persuade me to stay.

Evelyn Ganzglass: You decided you needed to go to the capital?

Scott King: I was in the capital for a conference and had made them aware of my health issues anyway. Of course, I thought I made them aware. You never knew if a letter had gotten there or not.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did anybody come out from Peace Corps to?

Scott King: To check on me because my health?

Evelyn Ganzglass: No, no, just teaching or anything?

Scott King: No, we had the country director. The teacher supervisor visited once. We were on our own. You know, this is in the days before host families and country counterparts, and, you know.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Well, I think we had more support. I wasn't out in the countryside, but I think we had staff visiting more often than in Somalia than you're talking about.

Scott King: Transportation. Transportation in Chad was difficult.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Yeah, how did you feel about leaving, were you? You were ready to go?

Scott King: It was mixed. It was mixed, mixed feelings. I still I still wish I could have stayed. Wish I could have gone back. It's not been safe for decades to go back to Chad. Peace Corps pulled out so many years back. I think it still shows up on one of the places the State Department says stay away from.

Evelyn Ganzglass: How do you think about your whole experience? Impact on your life, was it a good thing?

Scott King: It changed. It changed my life. It gave me a different perspective. Totally different perspective.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Can you talk what how did it change your perspective?

Scott King: I got a much, you know, I thought of myself as being very open minded, very liberal, but living in another country like that. It just changed your, it solidified some of those ideas and expanded others. Later in life, I went back to I went to Panama for 10 months to try to regain some of that. I've traveled on five continents visiting. But I wanted to try that living abroad again and even 10 months in Panama refreshed some of that. You get a better, healthier perspective about the world.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Do you think you had any impact in Chad?

Scott King: You never know. Or you're lucky if you do while you're there. You know, we heard this morning the story from Nepal about someone who's in the seventh grade when he meets his first Americans, and years later, he becomes one of the top diplomats at the U.N. There are people in our group in West Virginia who were taught Spanish by a guy in Peru who had met Peace Corps volunteers when he was little, talked his mother into to renting rooms to them. He ended up becoming the president of Peru. You just don't know. You just don't know.

Evelyn Ganzglass: But for you, despite the illness, you feel good about your experience.

Scott King: Yes. When I go out and talk to potential recruits, I'm very enthusiastic.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Well, talk a little bit about what you've continued to do with Peace Corps. What's your what's your involvement now?

Scott King: We've had several attempts in West Virginia to set up a returned Peace Corps volunteer group. The first attempt was back in the 1990s, and it managed to survive for a year or two. And then they gave up the ghost. Shortly after the 50 year anniversary, there was a group in West Virginia that started meeting in Charleston, the capital city. And up until three or four years ago, they had a mailing list of maybe 70 names. And the president resigned. She wanted to work on a Ph.D., and it was just too much for her. And I had already become advocacy director because no one else wanted to do it, and I thought there was a need for it. I have a lot of political background activity and political campaigning, so I understood a lot of the process. And when the president said she was leaving, no one else would take it. And at that time, I was the youngest of the officers. Which is sad considering that I'm 70 now and just a few years back. One of the first things I did was start looking for volunteers. We've grown our mailing list from 70 to about 240. Peace Corps says they think there may have been as many as 700 volunteers from West Virginia at some point and possibly 400 there now, which means we've got a ways to go to find all of them or even most of them. I do recruiting. I'm trying to get our group more decentralized, get people in other parts of the state to be a little more active and part of our state organization, part of the national organization. It's a part time job. With great pay. Just like being the volunteer, yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Same level of pay.

Scott King: To me, it's a continuation of my initial service.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Right. I forgot we kind of skipped over. So you were evacuated. I assume you came home pretty sick.

Scott King: Yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Then what happened?

Scott King: I got, the flight back was interesting. I flew from Paris to Boston and customs pulled me out of the line at the airport in Boston and had me strip down to my underwear because my clothes were so baggy from the weight loss that they thought I was smuggling. I told them, no, I just had gone through a really rough time. Yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And so did you went to the doctor and got what antibiotics?

Scott King: I had several doctor visits and gradually, you know, my mother was sure that if I would just keep eating, I'd gain all the weight back then. Yeah, it took a little more than that. Then I went to grad school, came back to West Virginia, started teaching, worked in schools for 20 some years, then switched careers, worked with the post office and finally retired.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you were history, were you were a history teacher?

Scott King: Social studies, history, geography. Spent a few years as a principal. Very frustrating. I'm very sympathetic to any administrators anymore. But after I retired, I started traveling and working with the Peace Corps group, and that's been. Anytime we get people together, it's like a family reunion and it doesn't matter when they served or how old they are or how young they are. The conversation always flows and everyone feels so comfortable. Like I said, it's like a family reunion.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Why do you think that is?

Scott King: I think our experience is just so different from the mainstream here. It binds us together.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Did we start out being the same and then have the experience or did the experience create that?

Scott King: It's like the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. And I think somebody may have said this before. It may be a combination of both. It may be a combination of both.

Evelyn Ganzglass: But it is true. When you meet Peace Corps, former Peace Corps volunteers.

Scott King: Coming to Peace Corps Connect, I have met Jonathan, who's our advocacy director, a couple of times. We talk, we're on the conference calls. I talk with you on the phone. I had seen you. You hadn't seen me. But to actually know any of the people here and you just start talking. It just it flows. Once you start, it just goes and goes and goes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So it's really brought the world back to the United States.

Scott King: Oh, yes. Yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Do you think the volunteers overall are more socially active, international or internationally active?

Scott King: Yes and yes. One of the reasons we had trouble getting RPCVs to come to our events is they're so busy with other things that are volunteering for. You know, we're the ones that do all these community service projects. We're the ones that are involved in community organizations. We're the ones who volunteer for political organizations, we're, you know.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Once a volunteer, always volunteer.

Scott King: Once a volunteer, always a volunteer. There ought to be a pill to give you a break.

Evelyn Ganzglass: That's great. Do you have any other thoughts you'd like to share? For posterity.

Scott King: For posterity. We have survived. We have survived. We survived the crises with Peace Corps, we survived the political struggles. We survived the people that thought we were a disaster that should be eliminated. And it's nice when you see the new volunteers, whether they're 22 or as in the case of one from West Virginia who starts teaching class in roughly 10 days, who's 78.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Wow.

Scott King: It's nice to see the enthusiasm, the excitement. It's and now it's even better because instead of waiting for two or three weeks to hear from them, I can get text messages and pictures online from them and see what and share it with everyone else. There's such an interest in seeing what our volunteers are doing.

Evelyn Ganzglass: It's a very valuable experience, that that I'm glad I have had, and I hear you as well.

Scott King: And glad to pass on. I mean, there are days I don't always feel like going up to work a job fair or a picnic or some other social event and sit at the table. But once I'm able to start talking with people, the energy just flows.

Evelyn Ganzglass: That's great. So thank you for the interview.

Scott King: Thank you very much.