Jim Beverwyck Oral History Interview
Interviewer(s): Robert Klein
Interviewee(s): Jim Beverwyck

Robert Klein: Bob Klein. It's April 29, 2003. I'm interviewing Jim Beverwyck, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya in 1968 to '70 in secondary education. So let's go back maybe a year before you joined and tell me what was going on about that time.

Jim Beverwyck: That would have put me in my final term at the, at the university.

Robert Klein: Okay, which university?

Jim Beverwyck: Michigan State University. Um. I had to do an additional term because I'd broken my leg playing football. Couldn't finish up the term and dropped out for a term and went back to finish up. Finished up in December.

Robert Klein: What was, what was your major?

Jim Beverwyck: Uh, you know, it was what they now call general studies I think. In those days it was called university studies. A BA generalist.

Robert Klein: Oh, so liberal arts.

Jim Beverwyck: Liberal arts, yes. Lots of history, lots of political science, economics.

Robert Klein: Did you have any idea what you planned to do with the degree?

Jim Beverwyck: I probably had a better idea then than I do now, which is to say I had very little idea what it is I wanted to be when I grew up.

Robert Klein: You weren't thinking in terms of, well, I'll become a teacher. It was just sort of open.

Jim Beverwyck: It was very open. Yes.

Robert Klein: While you were in college, did you do, what did you do with your summers? Did you do any volunteer work? Any travel?

Jim Beverwyck: No, neither. Um. I was from a working class background in western Michigan. Very poor family, poor in the extreme. And somehow, you know, I hadn't read my first book till I was 13 years old. I didn't know what reading was. The house didn't have books or magazines or anything. But I was a good ballplayer. And so that, that helped me in high school. And it turns out I was a pretty good student in high school. And next thing I knew, I was heading off to college. I really didn't know how it happened.

Robert Klein: Were you the first of your family to go?

Jim Beverwyck: I was the first of the family of six to graduate from high school.

Robert Klein: Even high school? Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Even high school. First to go to college.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Did you get a sports scholarship?

Jim Beverwyck: No. I'd had some feelers from Division II colleges to play football. And I actually had a uniform ready for me at Michigan State. And, you know, I was mature enough, presumably with hindsight, to recognize when I ran into some of those fellows before school started my freshman year that, that I just wasn't good enough to play football at a place like that.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: A really good decision, I mean, you know. So my orientation over time became academic and, uh.

Robert Klein: But you did play football in college?

Jim Beverwyck: No, no.

Robert Klein: Oh, you didn't. Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: I played lacrosse in college and that was fun. It was a club sport then. We traveled around, went to Notre Dame, went to Ohio State, banged around. We'd take our own vehicles and we'd, you know, play lacrosse and carouse, you know? Yeah, it was really fun, um, until I hurt myself playing that too. So, you know, ball playing was important probably because it, it, I don't know, got me through school, got me through this dysfunctional family stuff that was going on. And, uh, yeah, college was wonderful and then graduated from college. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Yeah.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Had very little idea. I was a provincial guy.

Robert Klein: Had you met Mary?

Jim Beverwyck: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Mary Parsaca. I met her the day I first attended that high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Robert Klein: Oh.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. That would have been in the eighth grade? Ninth grade. Ninth grade. So we're maybe 14, 15 years old. Fourteen I guess. Thirteen.

Robert Klein: On through late high school, early college. Were you at all aware of Kennedy and his presidency?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah.

Robert Klein: Do you recall how?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, I do. You're interested in that?

Robert Klein: Sure.

Jim Beverwyck: I just retold the story recently, just within the past few days, to someone. Um. The religious heritage with which I grew up, in an extended way, was Calvinist Dutch and Western Michigan is filled with those folks. And that's important because at the time of John F. Kennedy's campaign for the presidency in 1960, when I was 15 and I think a sophomore in high school, he came to Grand. Well, I have to go back a little bit. Um. This, this Calvinist church that we attended. There was a Sunday when, at that age 15, I went to church and listened to the, the Calvinist pastor, a Dutch person, do a sermon that was really a harangue about the Democratic candidate for the presidency.

Robert Klein: Uh huh.

Jim Beverwyck: You know, 15 years old. I played ball. I chased girls. And that's, that's all my life was.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: But there is something awry in this time in church that Sunday morning. I had never heard anyone in that conservative congregation say anything interruptive of the pastor's words.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: But there were numerous amens and hallelujahs. In retrospect, it was kind, I might call reminiscent of a Baptist sermon rather than a conservative, you know, Calvinist sermon. And what the, what the sermon was all about was, was the dangers of electing this person to the presidency because of the possibility of the pope taking over the United States and all this stuff. And, uh, and even as a kid, I knew something was wrong.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And after church, may have been the same day, I can't recall, it was so long ago, but maybe later that week I told my mother, um, you know, I'm not going back to church. Not sure why. I'm just not going back ever. And I never have.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: So somehow indirectly, John F. Kennedy kept me from the fold of the religious and the saved, for that matter.

Robert Klein: But you mentioned that Kennedy came to Grand Rapids.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. So within a month or two months, it must have been late summer or early fall of that year, 1960. School was in session. I know that the Republican candidate had come to Grand Rapids and school, if I recall correctly. My wife believes this is the case. Students were allowed to attend the rally in downtown Grand Rapids for the Republican candidate. I didn't go. Um, probably not on political grounds. Maybe I had football practice.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: But when the Democratic candidate came to town after, students were not excused from school. I know that's true.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I'd confirmed that years ago with other folks. And so I ditched school and I was not the kind of person who ditched school. I just did.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And some buddies and I went downtown and we climbed to the roof of a building, and the Secret Service were up there, and they made us get down. And we banged around in the crowd and we'd listen to a few words of the candidate. And, uh, I wasn't particularly interested. But when the, the speech ended, people were milling about and it was behind this, this famous downtown hotel called the Pantlind. And my buddies and I were working our way back across the river to get to school, I guess, and there was all this activity on the street. And, um, next thing we knew, there was a limousine rolling down the street slowly. Hey, that's him!

Robert Klein: Uh huh.

Jim Beverwyck: That's Kennedy. Oh, yeah. So my buddies and I sprinted alongside the limousine, and I literally leaned into the limousine, reached to the other side where the candidate was sitting, and shook his hand. I remember it well. Red hair, ruddy complexioned. Yeah. And that was a nice moment.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: For a guy who wasn't political or activist or anything else, I was just a bush kid. And, uh, but that was my contact with John Kennedy. And so.

Robert Klein: And then moving through high school and college, do you remember when you first heard of the word Peace Corps or the name Peace Corps?

Jim Beverwyck: Oh, gosh. No. It was probably. It was probably not during my college years.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm. You don't recall?

Jim Beverwyck: I have no recollection of it.

Robert Klein: Yeah, okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Maybe I did. But my first remembrance of the phrase Peace Corps surely came from my fiancée of the time, who is my wife today, in early 1968.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Upon graduation from college in December of '67, I still had some debts. I had lived off campus with some buddies and had to pay rent and a few other things and.

Robert Klein: Let's be off for a moment.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. [tape break]

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. So, uh, finished school and really at loose ends. Had to take care of these few debts, and I had to do that with a job. So I applied for a position at the Oldsmobile plant in Lansing making, what was the name of that Oldsmobile? Oldsmobile 88 or something. Don't ever drive one because I was responsible for putting in drive shafts, but I had to get my hair cut to do it. I guess something had gone on in college and I'd grown my hair long and they wouldn't hire me unless I cut my hair. Okay, this is a piece of the real world here. I'll get my hair cut and work on the assembly line for a few months, which I did. And not exactly what I wanted to do with my college education. So Mary was in Washington, D.C. I decided to go out there and bang around, which I did.

Robert Klein: Had you done any travel outside Michigan up to that point?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. You know, my family were like The Grapes of Wrath. We, uh, we once drove in a beat-up vehicle from Michigan to Los Angeles and lived there for two years.

Robert Klein: Wow.

Jim Beverwyck: And then ended up back in western Michigan.

Robert Klein: Yeah. How old were you then?

Jim Beverwyck: 1957. 12. 12 to 14. Yeah, something like that. 12. 11 to 13.

Robert Klein: It wasn't quite vacation travel?

Jim Beverwyck: No.

Robert Klein: Okay. And outside the country not at all?

Jim Beverwyck: No, I had not traveled at all.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: No, the only thing I knew was Western Michigan.

Robert Klein: So now, for the first time, you're going east?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, for the first time, I'm going east.

Robert Klein: And to the big city.

Jim Beverwyck: Actually, no. There was a time when I traveled to, uh, Kentucky with my father and my older half-brother to sell things. My father was a door-to-door salesman, an alcoholic.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And that was a very fun trip. I must have been 12 years old.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Somewhere around there.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: 13. And it was crazy, you know. It was across the border from Cincinnati and Kentucky and, and all those rolling hills there. And, and these very poor people. They're the people who my father would try to sell things to. Pictures, baby pictures. I can't remember what.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: But we did that for a couple of weeks. So I had been east like that on a trip.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: It was a memorable trip, I must say. But no, um, a real trip east. That was the first time when I had gone out there to, uh, be with Mary and we were engaged to be married. So it made sense to be in Washington, D.C. I banged around, got a letter of introduction from my congressperson, Gerald R. Ford from Grand Rapids, and the president of the university. I knew him through his son, who was a good friend of mine. So I had a letter of introduction there. So I poked around a little bit. I got a job with OEO.

Robert Klein: Ah, okay.

Jim Beverwyck: And it was my job to, uh, produce the applicants for VISTA positions. That was interesting. That was fun. Right downtown and met some fun young folks who are doing the same kind of work. It's memorable in that we had been given directive by our supervisor not to accept applicants from certain colleges and universities, without even looking at the applications.

Robert Klein: Interesting.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. And that was Bob Jones University and, uh.

Robert Klein: Oral Roberts?

Jim Beverwyck: Oral Roberts University. Those are the two I remember. There was a small, short list of places where they just didn't want to deal with the applicants. Very interesting. And I thought it was discriminatory, and of course it was. But somehow it made sense to me too at the time, I'm not exactly sure how.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: So I did that for a while and then there was more money in doing contract work with some agency that did the same thing. So I would take the applications home with me and I'd work at the Library of Congress in one of their quiet rooms and do my work. It was piecework. You were paid by the application. Anyway, it was, it was good to bang around in Washington. Um. I think the experience for that portion of a year, a good portion of a year, was enlightening. You know, up until that time, I really had not developed much of a political consciousness.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: Um. Married by this time. Shirley had suggested that we look at the Peace Corps as something we might want to do.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And I think, you know, maybe in the summer we'd filled out the application for the Peace Corps.

Robert Klein: Do you recall filling out the application?

Jim Beverwyck: No, I honestly don't.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I don't remember filling it out.

Robert Klein: You don't recall giving any preferences for assignment?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, I do. We, we had a preference for Southeast Asia. I think it was Thailand. And then I think there was a South American country, maybe Colombia, I don't know. And then there was a third. But I don't remember what it was.

Robert Klein: Had you had any foreign language training up to that point?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, I'd had Spanish in college. I'd had a year of Spanish.

Robert Klein: Just a year?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, just a year. Yeah. And I really spoke no Spanish. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, we, we got involved. I got involved a little bit with some activism in Washington, D.C., in 1968.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: I spent some time down on the Mall with the Poor People's Campaign.

Robert Klein: Ah, yeah. Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. And, you know, putting up tents and things like that. And it feels like ancient history, but in one, you know, in a certain regard. But in another, I can imagine myself, I can picture myself running around with a bunch of very happy young people doing these things that were so different from, from what I had known before.

Robert Klein: But it was almost like going from 0 to 60 given your background.

Jim Beverwyck: Going from 0 to 60. That's a good way to put it.

Robert Klein: And but you, you very, I gather, happily got yourself involved.

Jim Beverwyck: Oh, yeah.

Robert Klein: And was it simply adventure or was there conviction?

Jim Beverwyck: There was clearly conviction because it was the beginning of, kind of a revolutionary beginning to ultimately what is an evolutionary process that has allowed for me to become more progressive and, uh, more radical politically than I was then, today. It never stopped, and it continues. Um, the draft of course. I got my draft notice, not my draft notice, but my number. And I was sent to Baltimore for a physical examination. It was very harrowing. I hated the experience.

Robert Klein: Was it a military facility that you went to for the physical?

Jim Beverwyck: Camp something or other in Baltimore. I can't remember.

Robert Klein: Yeah, but it's a military something.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, it was a military camp of some kind. There were barracks and things about. Yeah. Took a bus with a bunch of inner city kids from, from Washington, D.C., and, and, uh, man, I hated it. I really did.

Robert Klein: Now, your official residence was still Michigan?

Jim Beverwyck: Still Michigan, yeah. I didn't have to go back to do that. So they made some kind of arrangement for me to go elsewhere to have my physical examination.

Robert Klein: But if you're going to be drafted, it would have been from.

Jim Beverwyck: Would have been through Kent County, Michigan.

Robert Klein: Yeah, okay.

Jim Beverwyck: That's right.

Robert Klein: Yeah. All right.

Jim Beverwyck: Where Grand Rapids is located. That was, that was, uh, a powerful influence. And I'd actually talked with friends about, you know, if I'm going to get drafted - this was before the examination - I'm taking off, you know. And I don't really know what it was all about. I mean, it was all happening so fast. It was the war in Vietnam, it was the civil rights movement. And Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in April. I was very much part of that. You know, I couldn't move from where I worked. I had walked all the way home to Capitol Hill. Um. All of that was so transforming.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: For young person. It was for me. And so there had been this talk of, you know, moving away, going to Canada, and thinking real hard about it. The major reason that I was prepared to take such radical steps, perhaps I was prepared, was because I was really beginning to have a hell of a good time. I was really enjoying my life.

Robert Klein: In the movement?

Jim Beverwyck: In the movement, in the crowd I hung with, with my partner, my fiancée.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Just enjoying life and feeling really, really alive. And Washington was a good place to be. My roommate at one point worked for Stu Symington out of Missouri, and he was, he was a liberal and he was supporting Gene, he was supporting Robert Kennedy. And I didn't want Robert Kennedy because he came in late behind Gene McCarthy, and I was staying clean for Gene. And, you know, there was all this stuff going on, you know, and it was, it was wonderful. And so mostly the avoidance of the draft, I think, was just selfish. It was, you know, I was enjoying myself so much, but it all dovetailed into pretty much the same thing.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And when we finally found out that we'd been accepted to become Peace Corps volunteers, we jumped at it. We really jumped at it.

Robert Klein: And the initial letter you got was inviting you to Kenya?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. Yeah, we, we'd. We'd been invited to go to Kenya.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: My wife, a smarter person than me, knew where Kenya was, for one thing. I had no idea where Kenya was. I guess maybe I knew it was in Africa.

Robert Klein: But what was the project you were invited to?

Jim Beverwyck: Secondary education.

Robert Klein: Do you have any reaction to that, particularly at the time?

Jim Beverwyck: I liked the idea.

Robert Klein: You had never taught?

Jim Beverwyck: If I'm recalling correctly, I liked the idea of being in a classroom.

Robert Klein: Okay. But you had done no teaching up to that point?

Jim Beverwyck: No, I'd done no teaching. No, no. My, my work experience was extensive, but basic.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: A lot of work. I mean, through all those high school years and college years, I always worked, but they were funky jobs.

Robert Klein: And it was, it must have been. I know it was. Well, were you and Mary completely in tune about yes, let's go?

Jim Beverwyck: Absolutely.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, we were absolutely in tune about let's go. She had gotten her degree in medical technology from Michigan State and then did a year's internship at the Washington Hospital Center. She was really prepared for laboratory work. But was sufficiently anxious to leave the country and do this thing that sounded really adventurous, to become a schoolteacher. She would have preferred to have been in a lab or doing something else related to medical work, but, but decided to give it a try.

Robert Klein: So what was the time frame now? You got, when did you get the letters?

Jim Beverwyck: We probably got the letter signed in July, August?

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Something like that. We got married in September. Third week in September of 1968. Two weeks later, we were on the plane for New York City.

Robert Klein: How did training? How did your family react to your, your going into this thing?

Jim Beverwyck: They had no idea. They had no idea what I was up to. Um. I don't know. It's, it's. An analogy might be my father's reaction over those years I played football in high school. He always went to the ball games and I was really good. And we had good teams in a good sized city. And he was always there.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: But he had no idea what football was. No idea. He was not a fan of any kind of sports whatsoever, but he was always there. And so I suppose, I suppose Dad and Mom were, were supportive of what it was I was doing, but had no idea what it was that I was doing.

Robert Klein: No inkling of danger and going to Africa or?

Jim Beverwyck: Their inkling was that I was going to a place where there were Black people.

Robert Klein: Right.

Jim Beverwyck: And that was not pleasant for them.

Robert Klein: Uh huh.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. Yeah. It was a racist family.

Robert Klein: Did either your family or Mary's family try to suggest that you hold back or not go?

Jim Beverwyck: No. Mary and I both were most willful. And, uh, she with her family and extended family, I with mine.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And we just made our own decisions. By the time we were 22 years old, our lives were our own.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Flew to New York?

Jim Beverwyck: Flew to New York.

Robert Klein: First time in New York City?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. Yeah, it was. It was quite something. Met the other, uh, trainees.

Robert Klein: It was a big group, wasn't it?

Jim Beverwyck: It was a very large group. I think there are 120, 128 trainees in this group.

Robert Klein: Do you recall what your impression was? I mean, here's the two of you now, you're meeting other people who are doing?

Jim Beverwyck: I do, I do.

Robert Klein: Go ahead.

Jim Beverwyck: I'm a young man. I'm a married young man. And but I'm still somehow aware that I have not been anywhere. I've really not done anything. And I'm meeting other young people who have been places and done things and had taken a junior year abroad and had, you know, gotten their master's from Stanford and who'd gotten their, you know, their degree from an Ivy League college. And I was a little bit in awe of, of so many of those in the program who are like this. But. Because of, you know, physical proximity during our training, because of who Mary and I were, because of who these people were, because of the, uh, the common goal, we were drawn to one another.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And in many cases, we, we've become lifelong friends.

Robert Klein: You weren't worried that you might not be able to compete in the training program against?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, I did.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I worried about that with my language training. And, you know, I just felt that, and a considerable portion of the time in the first few weeks, I think a month, was devoted to language training almost exclusively.

Robert Klein: Did you stay in New York for that?

Jim Beverwyck: No. We went to a place north of New York City in the Catskills called Monroe, and we had taken over this old resort hotel. It was beautiful and had wonderful grounds, and it was actually pretty funky. But we loved it and we could run around a lot, but we had to speak Swahili all the time. And there were Swahili instructors and it was all very exotic and exciting. But, you know, I'm not proficient with language, and maybe I, I just didn't trust my ability.

Robert Klein: Going into it, had anyone said, I mean, how did they justify your doing this Swahili immersion?

Jim Beverwyck: The necessity of, of, of fluency in the primary language, presumably the primary language of Kenya. Although, of course, we had been informed that we would be instructing in English.

Robert Klein: Right.

Jim Beverwyck: Uh, they convinced us, admirably I conclude, that fluency or somewhat fluency in this lingua franca of East Africa was a good thing.

Robert Klein: Did anyone say, imply or say that your ability to learn the language would affect your being selected or not?

Jim Beverwyck: If so, I don't recall.

Robert Klein: Okay. So four weeks of language immersion?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, something like that.

Robert Klein: What do you recall of it?

Jim Beverwyck: I remember the married couples, and there were quite a few married couples, all very, very young.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: The eldest of the married couples had to have been 25 and 26. Lynn and Al Malkinson, I think he still teaches at the University of Colorado. Wonderful people, but they seem. [tape break] And then finally being able to get to our rooms. And all newly married. So there were arguments about how much we could speak English when we were together in the dark. And of course, you know, everybody drew the same conclusion that, well, what this is all about is, is universal language. And we don't have to speak Swahili or English to get on with this business. It was a gas, and the married couples would talk about that.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I remember the, you know, the single guys, the single gals chasing each other around and all that. All that nice stuff that kids do. And a lot of serious conversation about what we're up to.

Robert Klein: Did you have at least one day a week off, when you're up in Montauk?

Jim Beverwyck: I don't think we did.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. It wasn't Montauk. It was Monroe.

Robert Klein: Yeah, Monroe. At the end of the four weeks, were you all tested?

Jim Beverwyck: I guess we were tested up there.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, we were tested up there. There was the FSI. FSI?

Robert Klein: FSR, the Foreign Service rating.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. Foreign Service Institute rating.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And I did fine.

Robert Klein: Good.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, I did fine. I was pleased enough and my wife did better. And some of my best buddies, our best buddies did very well. You know, that whole intimidation thing. How are these guys still there? Yeah, they were still there.

Robert Klein: I mean, your sense that they were way ahead of you?

Jim Beverwyck: Exactly. They were still there, and I was, well, yeah, I'm a really nice guy, and I know I'm going to do great because everything I do turns out just fine, you know? Um. But, boy, they sure are smart compared to me. There was, there was some of that. There's no doubt about it.

Robert Klein: Then next phase of training?

Jim Beverwyck: Back to New York City on the bus, or busses, and to West End. What was the name of that hotel?

Robert Klein: Paris.

Jim Beverwyck: Paris Hotel. Yes, it was. It was the Paris Hotel, 96th and West End or something. You know, you know that place?

Robert Klein: My old neighborhood.

Jim Beverwyck: I love that place. I mean, maybe it's a little bit like home, you know, it was hoo boy. And that's where we all stayed. We had our little lectures there and our small group sessions and our.

Robert Klein: At the hotel?

Jim Beverwyck: At the hotel. Some of it was conducted at the hotel and the remainder up at Columbia Teachers College. So some number of blocks north of there.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Was Columbia Teachers College running the program?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, they were.

Robert Klein: You don't recall who was the director of the program?

Jim Beverwyck: Maybe Mary does. I know I don't. I don't. I remember a psychiatrist.

Robert Klein: You want to talk about that now?

Jim Beverwyck: The psychiatrist?

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. We had our sessions, and I think maybe they were once a week, and we would meet with the psychiatrist. There were, um, what were they called? Marathon sessions. And I think they were like 12 hours.

Robert Klein: Go ahead.

Jim Beverwyck: Twelve hour sessions. And you were divided into groups. And so each group had 12, 14 trainees. And you would, I think the effort by the coordinators, the moderators, whatever they were called, was to break down the emotional barriers of, of the trainees. I don't know why. Maybe in.

Robert Klein: Were you in the same group as Mary?

Jim Beverwyck: No, different groups.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Which was also interesting at the time, because I was very curious about what was going on with her group, and she was very curious about what was going on with mine.

Robert Klein: But there was no specific agenda for the group other than?

Jim Beverwyck: Um, no, not that I recall. Just talk. There was a lot of emoting, a lot of sharing of experiences, life experiences, concerns, fears, frustrations. Um. A lot of it I could not relate to.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And some in the group would go on and on and on about things, you know, emotional issues in their lives and their upbringings and all of this. And people would break down in tears and the facilitator would hug them and we'd all hug them and we had little trusting exercises and such. And I loved it. It was fun, but I didn't know what was going on. I really did not know what was going on because it was entirely new to me.

Robert Klein: Did you have any sense that someone was evaluating you?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Robert Klein: And it was part of.

Jim Beverwyck: We all, we all sensed that. Yeah. And it was part of it. It was part of it. But they lasted so long, you know, if you had any idea for yourself that you were going to protect yourself over 12 hours from some kind of negative evaluation that might be a result? You can forget about that because, you know, 12 hours people get tired. And, you know, I think a lot of the emotional stuff that transpired was a consequence of that exhaustion, trying to protect yourself.

Robert Klein: Let's go back to the, um, after language training. You've never taught and you're going into a teaching situation. What was the technical studies or professional studies like?

Jim Beverwyck: I don't remember.

Robert Klein: Teachers College.

Jim Beverwyck: Teachers College, Columbia Teachers College. You know, a very exclusive place.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I've used their little resume over the years, you know, to get me into other programs.

Robert Klein: But you don't recall?

Jim Beverwyck: No, I honestly don't recall.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: I do remember that they did send us out to find. Oh, yeah, um. They sent us out on a community exploration.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: And it was literally sending out 120 people, most of whom were middle class, upper middle class Anglos, with exceptions in the group, into New York City and the other boroughs to have an experience. And come back and share. I ended up, um, I had no idea where I was going, what I was doing, but I ended up in this neighborhood. I took the subway somewhere, got off. Again, we're separated.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: My wife and I. And poked around and had some coffee with some people. And, uh. And there was a high school there. It was a big kind of inner-city high school that was exclusive for some reason. It was called Brooklyn something.

Robert Klein: Not Bronx High School of Science?

Jim Beverwyck: It was, it was a high school of science.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: And the school had been closed for a week or two because of the big strike in New York City. But there were students there, mostly Black kids. Incredibly smart kids. Said, hey, what's going on here? Well, we have some teachers who are, who are crossing the picket line and they're going to open the doors and they're going to go in. They're going to teach us. Yeah? Well, can I come along? Well, yeah, sure, but what do you know? Well, I know Swahili. You know Swahili? Yeah, I know a little bit of Swahili. Some smart-ass kid says, [speaks Swahili]. Yeah. So I immediately hit with these kids. It must have been about ten of them.

And so somebody showed up. We went into the school. There was a classroom. I stayed with these kids for hours. We laughed. We talked. I just, this nice experience. Really, really fun.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: These very, very bright children. And that was a turn on for me. This is what teaching is or can be.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I liked it. Came back and shared that with all the other people and listened to all of their experiences. And Mary had gotten mugged on the subway and, oh God, there are all these stories. And then we were assigned to teach for a month, six weeks. I can't remember. After having been placed in a, um, with a family in New York City. That's part of the community experience thing. People who volunteered their services to, to put up trainees, Peace Corps volunteer trainees. And we taught at a place called Bishop Fort High School for that period of time. And I don't really remember much of that.

Robert Klein: Was there any agenda in living with the family? Did anyone try to direct the experience for you? It was just set up.

Jim Beverwyck: If they did, then I presume there was some kind of agenda to it. Um. I don't remember. And they didn't do a very good job of articulating it.

Robert Klein: Do you, do you remember at all? This is the student teaching situation. Initially going into the classroom and having to get up in front of the group and teach a lesson?

Jim Beverwyck: I don't. I really don't. And I had my lesson plans and I remember sitting in the teacher's lounge there at Bishop Ford High School and talking to the other teachers. And it's a Catholic school, so it was still open.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Um. And I did it every day, but I don't remember much of it. So much more vividly recall that, that day with those kids at that Bronx high school. Or Brooklyn high school or whatever, wherever it was. Yeah.

Robert Klein: And there was still more to go of training once you finished with the home stay and the practice teaching?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, there was a piece in there. There had, there were evaluative efforts going on it seems. There were interviews and, uh.

Robert Klein: Do you recall being interviewed separately by a psychiatrist?

Jim Beverwyck: No, I. Shoot.

Robert Klein: May not have happened.

Jim Beverwyck: You know, I think it was separate.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: And no. Yes, it was separate. And it was the final interview I had with a psychiatrist, I suppose a psychiatrist. He may have been a psychologist, but anyway, somebody who had looked over the paperwork, had looked over the, the evaluation reports that had, that had been done during the two and a half months plus of training.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Because he had, he had the paperwork in front of him and we talked and. Uh. That was interesting because he wanted to know why a bright upper middle class kid who'd gone to an exclusive college would want to go to Africa. He had no idea who I was. None. I loved it.

Robert Klein: That's great.

Jim Beverwyck: Man. I mean, was I putting on some kind of show? Did I, did I pull the wool over people's eyes? I mean, why was he thinking this thing? I didn't think I'd done such a thing. You know, you can be a poor boy and be smart too. Partly in my head, you know? Yeah.

Robert Klein: Do you recall final selection?

Jim Beverwyck: Um, only. No, I don't. I don't recall having been informed that we'd been selected.

Robert Klein: Do you recall people being deselected?

Jim Beverwyck: Yes. That is what I remember from the process.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: There had been a number of our new friends. And at that age, and with that kind of intense experience, um, you consider them real friends, who had been deselected from the training program. And it was, it was, uh, it was all very sad.

Robert Klein: Was anyone inclined to protest or were you afraid that it might go against you if you did?

Jim Beverwyck: That's a good question, Bob. In my, in my recollection, there was no movement certainly to protest.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: And that may very well have been, and I speak for myself, concern about my own position.

Robert Klein: Yeah. One other thing about training. Was there any point in training where you and Mary, there was sessions speaking specifically to married couples?

Jim Beverwyck: I don't think there were.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: I don't remember any.

Robert Klein: And I gather both you and Mary, neither of you felt that there was a risk of being deselected?

Jim Beverwyck: No. Uh, no, there wasn't. Well, I don't think there was for Mary, and I know there wasn't for me.

Robert Klein: Okay. It could have been ripping, I mean, for a couple if they were deselected. Well, whose fault is it really, you know?

Jim Beverwyck: We wondered, we wondered about that. Because some of those, some of those folks that we were concerned about were married couples.

Robert Klein: When training was over, did you have a chance to go home before you went overseas or?

Jim Beverwyck: God, I suppose so. Yeah. We went home and. I think we went home, man.

Robert Klein: Would the word Christmas mean anything?

Jim Beverwyck: Not a hell of a lot.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: It never did in my family. So, you know.

Robert Klein: You went back for Christmas.

Jim Beverwyck: I think so.

Robert Klein: Before the training was over.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. Okay.

Robert Klein: I cheated.

Jim Beverwyck: Good. Thanks. Thanks. We went back, and it's a fog to me, and I know why. Because my life had moved away from, in a very short period of time, from where I'd grown up. And I wasn't interested. I wanted this thing to happen, and I was really, really myopic about it.

Robert Klein: So now, you know, training's over. It's clear you're both going. Did you have any doubts? I mean, you're going, you're not a teacher and you've never been to Africa. How did you feel or how did you look at what was coming up?

Jim Beverwyck: With exultation.

Robert Klein: Uh huh.

Jim Beverwyck: With, with happy expectation.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I mean it. Yeah. I was just so ready. I was so excited. At that time it was the best thing that had ever happened to us, to me.

Robert Klein: Did you have a sense that, uh, you know, in your motivation to go you've talked a lot about where it fit in your life of wanting to help or wanting to be of service to people.

Jim Beverwyck: Oh yeah.

Robert Klein: That was part of the mix?

Jim Beverwyck: Definitely. Definitely a very big part of the mix. You know, Peace Corps. It meant something to me. It meant, you know, I bought into all of what I was hearing, what I was being told, that, that this was an effort to be helpful, to be a good person to other good people. And I bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Robert Klein: Do you think maybe some of that ethic emerged out of your activism from being in Washington?

Jim Beverwyck: Absolutely. Yeah, no question.

Robert Klein: And it wasn't, you know, answering Kennedy's call because that was almost historic at that point.

Jim Beverwyck: No, it wasn't answering Kennedy's call. It was not answering Kennedy's call at all, really.

Robert Klein: Okay. Now we have to get you to.

Jim Beverwyck: It was far more immediate than that. Yeah. Yeah.

Robert Klein: Were there area studies at the same time? There must have been as part of training.

Jim Beverwyck: There were. Yeah, there were area studies. And those were the courses we took at Columbia Teachers College. Cross cultural studies, um, African history, East African history. Some really good stuff. In fact, I still have the textbooks, they're wonderful. Yeah, really.

Robert Klein: Did you begin to have a sense of you weren't just going any place, you were going someplace?

Jim Beverwyck: Absolutely.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. The rest of the world just kind of started fading away for me. And I was, I was wanting to know what Kenya was.

Robert Klein: Did you have an idea of where you'd like to be? You had learned something about Kenya and its educational system and what was going on even before you went. Had you formed any opinions?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. Wanted to be in the bush. Did not, didn't want to be in town.

Robert Klein: How would you define the bush?

Jim Beverwyck: Well, I probably would not have called it the bush at the time. Um, I did not want to be. And we had talked about this, Mary and I, in a town or a city. We wanted to be in the countryside where we, perhaps through our studies, perhaps through our conversations with trainers, Kenyan trainers and others, felt we would be most comfortable and most content doing our work. So that was the most important consideration, that we'd be placed in the countryside.

Robert Klein: Before you left, had you been surveyed about your preferences for assignment?

Jim Beverwyck: I don't think so.

Robert Klein: And during the whole period of training, do you recall meeting any Peace Corps Washington or Peace Corps Kenya staff people?

Jim Beverwyck: I don't remember.

Robert Klein: Okay. No one tried to come out and sort of put a Peace Corps imprint on you?

Jim Beverwyck: Before we went to Kenya?

Robert Klein: Right.

Jim Beverwyck: I think, yes, there had been someone, I believe, who had been in touch with Mary about a position they wanted to fill at the Nairobi hospital, the Nairobi Hospital or a hospital in Nairobi, in the laboratory. And it was something she really had to think very, very hard about.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Very, very hard about. And, uh, although my degree of sensitivity and tolerance and, uh, chauvinism was less than what it could have been or should have been, I think I wanted for her to be happy with what we were going to be doing. And boy, I don't remember for sure, but I'd like to believe that, that looking back on it, that I would have, you know, wanted for her to make that decision for herself. And I think we did. And she, she wanted to be in the countryside too.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: But I remember that being hard for her.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm. Well, she had just completed the internship.

Jim Beverwyck: Oh, yes. And her four years of intense training in her chosen profession. And here she had this wonderful opportunity.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: But I guess, you know, it was more important for her that we play together and she probably knew, she's very insightful with me, knew that that I didn't want to be in the city. I really wanted to know what Africa was out in the country.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah.

Robert Klein: Do you recall the flight over particularly?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah.

Robert Klein: Sort of the sober moments.

Jim Beverwyck: Well, no, I don't remember the sober moments. There weren't any.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Um, O.J. Simpson was running for a touchdown for USC in the Rose Bowl at the airport. There was his last, that was his senior year.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And we got on the plane. And we flew across the ocean and, whoo, we drank like fish on that, on that flight.

Robert Klein: It wasn't a charter flight, was it?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, it was.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Jim Beverwyck: It was a charter flight to London.

Robert Klein: Because it was a big group still.

Jim Beverwyck: It was a very big group. Took the whole plane. And they wined and dined us. And we're all miserable from London to Rome I guess it was, just hung over. And it was, it was really fun. And we, oh yeah, we flew from Rome to Beirut. And that was, that was sobering figuratively and literally, I think.

Robert Klein: In what way?

Jim Beverwyck: There had been within days or a week an attack on Lebanon, on Beirut, by Israelis. And there were burning planes on the, the margins of the runway and armed, lots of armed soldiers. This was very close to the beginning of their civil war, maybe just a few years before the civil war began. But it was, you know, Lebanon was in terrible turmoil.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And there was a Jewish guy in our program who was busily taking photographs outside the window. Said what the fuck are you doing?

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I mean, right away it was like, don't be dumb here. You know, you, we're in a different place and we can't be dumb, you know? And we had to get off the plane for a little while and get back on. We saw these smoking airplanes burning. It's a different world, you know. And then to Entebbe, Uganda, where we touched down in Africa for the first time, and it was dark and, uh, and got down and we smelled Africa. All of us were so excited.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And then to Nairobi.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. It's good. The flight over was really fun.

Robert Klein: Do you recall your first few days, what you were doing, how you were received, who received you?

Jim Beverwyck: We stayed in a little hotel that I don't think is any longer there. The Rose Garden, I think it was called. It's one of the colonial hotels. Had a little fan in the room and no air conditioning or anything. But it was, it was really, for us it was exotic. The bougainvillea were everywhere. And oh, it was just a joy to be in this hotel. And there were a number of small hotels around the central part of the city where our program was placed until they ironed everything out. And we'd meet over there at the Peace Corps headquarters, which was a set of Quonset huts I think.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And talk about assignments. We actually, Mary and I actually went out to that hospital. They still touched base with her about that thing. They really wanted her to do it.

Robert Klein: Right.

Jim Beverwyck: And we took that little tour and they asked her to think about it and she decided against it.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: And we just kind of hung out, ran into our buddies in town, you know, our fellow trainees, as we were moving around. And finally got our assignment.

Robert Klein: Do you recall in your first few days trying to use your Swahili?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, we did. We used it with each other. We used it with our fellow trainees, RPC, RPCVs now. And some Africans we met. Yeah, we played with it a little bit. We wanted to know if we could do it.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: That test wouldn't come until later.

Robert Klein: Yeah. So now you finally get your assignment.

Jim Beverwyck: Is that, is that where we are? Just where we got the assignment? Whew. Man.

Robert Klein: We can.

Jim Beverwyck: I just can't believe we're just there. Yeah, we got our assignment. We're really excited. Others have already gone to theirs. Um.

Robert Klein: What was your understanding of where you were being assigned? And what kind of school was it?

Jim Beverwyck: Harambee School. Um, I think we had been informed that one or two of the forms in the secondary school had been taken over by the government. Um, that it was a long way away from Nairobi, that we were being picked up by missionaries who were connected with the school, whose mission was located at the school. That's pretty much what we knew. Um. What would we be doing there? We would be teaching there. And that was basically it.

Robert Klein: Now, this was early January, right?

Jim Beverwyck: This was early January.

Robert Klein: And the school years in Kenya begin in January?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, that's right. That's right. So we got there before that term began, the second term of that year.

Robert Klein: Right.

Jim Beverwyck: That would have been the 60, academic year '68-'69.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Um. Yeah. So we were picked up by the missionaries and took the long drive back to Taranganya.

Robert Klein: Had you done a whole bunch of shopping in Nairobi before you left? Do you recall particularly, I mean, mosquito nets and stuff?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. We must have. We must have done some shopping. We did have mosquito nets by the time we arrived at Taranganya. We may have done the shopping in Kisii.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Um, Kisii must be 250, close to 300 miles from Nairobi.

Robert Klein: Had anyone from Peace Corps been out to visit the school site before you went?

Jim Beverwyck: Not that I know of.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: I don't think anyone had ever been there from Peace Corps. But I think we did do some shopping in Kisii because I remember walking up and down the aisles in this Indian grocery kind of general store, um, Champi's was the name of it, with the missionary guy. And we were picking up some canned goods.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And then off to Taranganya.

Robert Klein: Now, who was the missionary? I mean, where was he from?

Jim Beverwyck: The mission was sponsored by the Elam, E-L-A-M, Mission Society of Long Island, New York. And or Detroit, Michigan.

Robert Klein: Uh huh.

Jim Beverwyck: Evangelical Christian group, who had been there some number of years and had been instrumental, if not solely responsible, for establishing a school in Kuria District. The name of the tribe were the Kuria, is the Kuria. A large tribe in Tanzania, but very small in Kenya, in the western part of Kenya.

Robert Klein: And the missionary himself was an American?

Jim Beverwyck: These were American missionaries, all of them. [tape break] I think Scandinavian Swedish young couple, evangelicals also. But there was little if any contact in my recollection between that nearby mission and the American mission where our school was located. Another mission at Isebania, which was 35 miles away. And we had very, very close friends, a young married couple, Peace Corps volunteers, at that Catholic high school.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And they were Maryknolls and two priests who became good friends of ours, one in particular. But anyway, it was a mission influenced secondary school there at Taranganya. Taranganya is really not a village. Um, the nearest village was Kehancha, four miles plus down the road, where there were five or six dukas and a little saloon. And you could buy some things there, not very much. Yeah, Kehancha. I don't even think it had a refrigerator. The beer you could buy was warm. Yeah. So, Taranganya, I don't know where the name came from. It's on the map, but it's not a village. It's just a place. You know, this mission and the school and then the countryside. Uh.

Robert Klein: It's a boarding? Can you describe the school briefly?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, a boarding school. Um. A single wing of four rooms. Two empty buildings at 90 degree angles to it on both ends, but separated. Buildings constructed and financed by USAID and some other program. The symbol was a Black hand and a white hand shaking. And that was the symbol on these two buildings. It had been a project of USAID, I guess.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Empty. And then east would have. Anyway. So away from the school compound proper, on one side were, was a dormitory, an adobe structure with a tin roof like the school itself, but considerably in less good state, for the 120, 140 boys, a boys school, and small. One end of it was the place where they ate, you would call it a cafeteria, but I don't want to call it that.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And then a small building, thatched roofed, adjacent to that, which was the kitchen, where two or three people made food for the students. Then on the other side of the compound, the opposite direction, were what were to become staff quarters. There was one, two, three houses for staff. The mission staff, the missionaries who taught at the school, lived on the mission compound, as did we for the first 3 to 5 months of our time that first year. Yeah. Uh, acreage. Let's see. I'd say the whole thing was like 40 acres.

Robert Klein: Did it have a playing field?

Jim Beverwyck: It had a playing field. Um, well, it was a field that kids played in.

Robert Klein: Okay. Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. And football was big. You know, I introduced track and field, well, certain events in track and field, to the kids and introduced basketball to the kids. That part was fun because the kids, you know, the boys just loved to jump and run and throw. They really did. But football was the, was it. I mean, soccer was the game.

Robert Klein: Let's go to the teaching side of things and then we'll talk about living conditions. Uh. What was the staff of school? It was you and Mary.

Jim Beverwyck: Headmaster. African. Our best friend, Jerry Mugove, African science teacher.

Robert Klein: What was his academic background?

Jim Beverwyck: Um, I think two years, but possibly more, in Nairobi at one of the teaching institutes.

Robert Klein: Advanced teacher training?

Jim Beverwyck: Definitely post-secondary, teachers training college.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: A very bright guy. Beautiful man. Um. Paul Moheri, a Kuria, the only Kuria in the entire time we were there, who was an instructor.

Robert Klein: Kuria?

Jim Beverwyck: Kuria tribe.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Jim Beverwyck: A local tribe.

Robert Klein: Got it. Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Jerry was a Maragoli and the headmaster was a Luo. Um. And this just comes off my tongue because of the reality of tribalism in Kenya. It just does. I mean, today it's like, it just rolls right off because you become part of this milieu where tribalism is a very real component of where you are, and it played out.

Robert Klein: And people use it as an identifier?

Jim Beverwyck: People use it as an identifier, and it played out in curious ways over those, those years we were there. Um. Let's see. So that's Mr. Mugove, Jerry Mugove, Mr. Obiero, Paul Moheri, Mary, me. And then, um. That was it the first year. No, no, no. That was, that was it when we arrived.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I think that was it when we arrived. Then the excitement was all about the new missionaries who were arriving, who were trained to teach.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: And they came, they were recent graduates of a university in Oklahoma, a very highly regarded university in Oklahoma. And all the students knew about it. And the missionaries who had picked us up in Nairobi and drove us out knew about it. That Oral Roberts University was really something.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And so. Um, the Floyds were going to arrive. This is within a week of us arriving, and we're excited as hell.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Young couple recently out of college, just like us. Yeah. And this school needs a lot. I mean, look at all these kids. You know, we've talked with the headmaster. We've met the African teachers. Wait a minute. There are 120 to 140 kids here. What are we going to do? We've got these four little rooms. You gotta be kidding me. What are we, how are we going to teach? Who's going to teach what?

Robert Klein: Right.

Jim Beverwyck: Where? So we got two new teachers coming.

Robert Klein: But, but the, uh. There were four, four forms in the school?

Jim Beverwyck: Four forms.

Robert Klein: And the student stayed in the class?

Jim Beverwyck: Yes.

Robert Klein: And the teachers came to them?

Jim Beverwyck: Yes.

Robert Klein: So then on any given period, the only four of you could be teaching.

Jim Beverwyck: That's right.

Robert Klein: Okay. Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: That's right.

Robert Klein: Do you recall how, what, what your teaching program was?

Jim Beverwyck: English. Let's see. The first year it was English 2 and English 3. Second form, third form. Next year, English 3 and English 4. And I taught African history 2, 3, and 4. And I taught world history 2, 3, and 4. I don't think I ever had a form 1 class. So I had history, world history, African history, English, and literature.

Robert Klein: So English was both composition and literature?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. And I don't think I taught math. I'm pretty sure I didn't teach math.

Robert Klein: Did you have any guidance in what you were supposed to be teaching to any given class?

Jim Beverwyck: Yep. Sure did. The syllabi.

Robert Klein: Which was?

Jim Beverwyck: The syllabi outlined very clearly in depth what it was these children had to know, forms one and two, to pass the Kenya Junior Secondary Examination, the KJSE, and then for all forms, through form 4, the passage successfully of the Cambridge examination. And that is what it was all about. You had to teach to that syllabi.

Robert Klein: Did you have books and did the students have books that matched up to this?

Jim Beverwyck: No. [to other person] Hi. How are you doing? No, we didn't. We had to do a lot of scrounging. Much of what we were able to use had to be procured from innumerable boxes crammed with books from the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia, and maybe some from China, I don't know. But they're packed away in this tiny storage room in the middle of the school compound. You had form 4, form 3, then this weird little space where teachers met, then had this little storage space, and then form 2, form 1.

Robert Klein: Right.

Jim Beverwyck: So the texts did not match the syllabi. You did in the classroom with what you could find that was somehow relevant.

Robert Klein: Do you recall your initial teaching? You know, actually now you're getting up in front of a class. You're in Kenya, I mean, it's not just practice or training, it's the real thing.

Jim Beverwyck: It was the real thing. And, well, there was the necessity of being politic, of being responsive to the authority of the school, the headmaster, uh, and to figure all of that out. To figure out what was the daily routine of a secondary school in Kenya.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: And that meant arriving at a certain time and forming a semicircle around the Kenyan flag in a very well prepared little garden with a flagpole and a selected student would raise that flag and we would sing the national anthem and we would do the stuff and. And trying to put all of that in place and recognizing the authoritative and probably authoritarian aspects of that kind of institution in the third world where they learn what they know from the English, and where am I going to fit in here, and how can I do whatever it is I feel has to be done in the classroom to make a difference, with all of the things that have to be done outside of my control, that are outside of my control.

Robert Klein: Did you prepare lessons initially or did you say, I'm going to go in and just sort of feel my way and see?

Jim Beverwyck: I didn't prepare lessons.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Ever.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: I always relied on my store and I'd never been tested in regard to what my store, what was in the store. And, uh, as I began spending time in the classroom, it became fairly clear to me that I had a good store and, uh, I had a way of passing that store along to the children. Um, how did I feel about it walking in there, those early days? I felt incredibly responsible. I think I grew up.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: And, well, you were a teacher yourself there. And all those children. There were so many. And the way they would sit there behind those funky desks, and they were too big for the desks and all that, and they would look at you. God. I mean, the responsibility really was overwhelming.

Robert Klein: Do you recall initial language problems? I mean, they're speaking English a little differently.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah.

Robert Klein: So were you.

Jim Beverwyck: Uh huh. Yeah. There was adjustment there that, real necessity for adjustment. It took some time. It took weeks to, to really be comfortable with their kind of English, English based, English mixed with their native dialect, you know, the accent. And American English, yeah, which is so different.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: It took a little while.

Robert Klein: How did you work through the conflict that a lot of teachers had, Peace Corps teachers had, of being an American teacher who wants to teach to creative thinking and as against the system that sort of rewards rote learning and that's the expectation on the part of the students?

Jim Beverwyck: I didn't have a conflict because I refused. I refused to have that be a matter of contention between me and my students because I knew that what I wanted for them to learn was to think.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: That once you learned how to think, once you learned critical thinking, you could learn it all. And you weren't going to get that by what it was you expected for me to do.

Robert Klein: But that doesn't match up against them having to sit these exams.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, it does.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: It certainly did. Um. And there were numerous occasions where, oh God, I battled with them. They wanted me to fill that chalkboard. I mean, a really funky chalkboard, which you could hardly write on it. They wanted me to fill it with outline of whatever particular content area we had.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: And I wouldn't do it. And there were some kids. There were some kids who were pretty aggressive about informing me that that's the way it had to be done because they had to pass this KJSE. They had to pass the Cambridge examination if they were going down to form 5 and 6.

Robert Klein: Right.

Jim Beverwyck: They had to have this information. You guys are going to get the information, but you've got to trust me.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And we did go around.

Robert Klein: Did the headmaster ever get involved in that?

Jim Beverwyck: No. I had my problems with the headmaster, but he did not, in my recollection, interfere with what I was trying to do.

Robert Klein: And none of the students went to him to complain.

Jim Beverwyck: Not that I know of. And one reason there is that most of the students were Kuria, that tribal thing, and they wouldn't go to the headmaster for anything. And none of the Luo students that I know of went to him, because I had good relationships with the Luo students. Only recently one of our former students, who we told you about him yesterday, he's a very successful person. He had, I think it was Chacha who told us, that there was a time he remembered when he was form 2, when there were some students who were going to, um, go on strike. Because of me. That I wasn't giving them the syllabus in the classroom. I said, you've got to be kidding me.

He said, no, no, I remember sitting in the dormitory at night with a light and talking with some of the other kids, and they were saying, you know, he's not writing on the blackboard. He's just talking to us and making us answer questions. And what does that have to do with, you know, scene six, act four of Romeo and Juliet, you know? Wow. I mean, when he told me that, like God, it was like that heavy, huh? I don't remember it being.

Robert Klein: Okay. Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I really don't. It was, it was. Well, um, you know, I, I think maybe I forced my will upon them. I stood there before those 40 kids every day, and I would just, you will. You know, my will will make you do this. Um. And I think it worked, you know? I mean, I felt comfortable the entire time. But that's a very good question, and it's a very provocative one, um, because I really personally could not go to that place of rote memorization and I couldn't do it for myself. And first and foremost, I couldn't do it for myself and I couldn't do it to them.

Robert Klein: Can you picture yourself after maybe three or four months of being there, had the teaching fallen into a routine and you were comfortable in the classroom?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah.

Robert Klein: Did you have a sense that the students were responding to your approach?

Jim Beverwyck: Oh, yeah.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Part of that had to do with having been, well, I'd volunteered to set up the library. One of those two USAID buildings was, I guess we decided as a group to be a library. And we went through all those books and we would take trips to Nairobi and, you know, fill the trunks of vehicles and bring out more books from Peace Corps. And we filled this library.

Robert Klein: Uh huh.

Jim Beverwyck: And I had kids who worked for me and, uh, we cataloged and we had a little checkout desk and, oh God, it was such a joy. I mean, they had all these books.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: The kids wanted books. They wanted books so badly. We had books at home, our little house. And our students were always welcome. They were more than welcome. They were encouraged to be with us after school in our home to read. And on numerous occasions we lent out books. Sometimes we'd get them back, sometimes we wouldn't.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: It never made any difference.

Robert Klein: How long did you live on the mission?

Jim Beverwyck: We lived on the mission two or three months, I think.

Robert Klein: Do you remember the shift to the?

Jim Beverwyck: Oh, yeah.

Robert Klein: And how it changed? Did it represent any kind of change in your life or relations to the students?

Jim Beverwyck: Oh, yeah. It was a change in our life because we were uncomfortable and had become contra, as they say, up here in northern New Mexico, contra contra, we'd become kind of rebellious about living on the mission compound. We were uncomfortable there. Um. There were unspoken expectations of our behavior on the mission compound by the missionaries, like drinking a beer on a Sunday. Things like that. We've got to get out of here. And so for ourselves, personal expectations, yeah, it was a great thing to move from, from the beat up old house there on the mission to the really kind of strange little concrete block house on the school compound. But we had more physical proximity to the students where they lived in the dormitory, and they were more willing to come.

Robert Klein: And there were no school rules about students coming to master's houses?

Jim Beverwyck: No. Well, if there were, I didn't know about it. And the kids knew that they could always come. And they came. They came a lot. Yeah.

Robert Klein: Did you have any dorm responsibilities, like being a housemaster?

Jim Beverwyck: I don't think so.

Robert Klein: Okay. They may not have even had them.

Jim Beverwyck: No, no. There was a night watch person.

Robert Klein: But you didn't supervise at the dorms at all?

Jim Beverwyck: No.

Robert Klein: Night studies?

Jim Beverwyck: Night studies were held in the rooms.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Um, it was absolutely necessary because the paraffin lights they had, I think there may have been one or two petrol max lights, the pump ones that use white gas, which give a good light. But most of the lights were the paraffin, which give very little light. They wouldn't work in the dormitory.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: So we had study in the evening in, in the rooms. And I would go to the rooms, Mary would go to the rooms, and we'd spend time with the students at night. Yeah. All the time.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: We'd be at night in the rooms. So that the light was more diffuse and so kids could cram around their desks and study. And study they did. It was unbelievable how they studied.

Robert Klein: Do you want to talk? I'm not sure when the problems with the headmaster came in. Was it during the first year?

Jim Beverwyck: Was that during the first year? I think it was. It was during the end of the first year. Um. Milton Obiero, the headmaster, and I got along fine. I've had this problem in my life, a lot of trust, and trusted him. And, and, you know, I'd go to him and make requests of him, and he would make requests of me to take on these responsibilities and that responsibilities. And there were a lot of responsibilities in the little place like that. One of them was to do the cross country team, track team as a combination thing, and you would take trips with the students and that was fun. I really loved it.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: On one occasion, I took a group of students on a bus to a village some distance away. Must have been 70 miles away. Awingo, I think it was called. We had a track meet and it was a Luo area and a number of the Luo students at our school were from that area, from that village maybe. We had the track meet. You know, I met with the teachers from that school. We had our little tea session afterwards and all that. Got to the bus in town and one of the students hadn't arrived. We waited and we waited. We waited a couple hours for this kid. And when he showed up, I was pissed. No, really pissed. God damn, you know. Who do you think you are? You're holding up this whole bus the entire time. We've got to get back to school. And just berated him for unconscionable behavior. Well, the headmaster came down.

Robert Klein: Did he have an explanation?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, he did. He was visiting his family.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. And that meant nothing to me, because you had other responsibilities. I mean, I just, you know.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And I had to get these kids back, you know, the whole thing. So the headmaster was very upset with me. Very upset. You know, you were abusive of an African student. Who do you think you are, you wazungu? You know, blah, blah, blah.

Robert Klein: Did he actually call you into his office?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah.

Robert Klein: It was a one on one?

Jim Beverwyck: He did. It was one on one. At least it was that. None of it was public. And I, you know, ultimately respected him for that. But, man, I was really, I was devastated. And I'd been there about a year.

Robert Klein: And now you were devastated by his criticism of you.

Jim Beverwyck: Because I had been so supportive and mostly I had been supportive of him vis a vis the mission.

Robert Klein: Uh huh.

Jim Beverwyck: That was the big one. He'd been having lots of problems with the mission and the mission teachers wanting to do an evangelical thing at school, to teach the Bible. Bible was an academic subject.

Robert Klein: Right.

Jim Beverwyck: And they just wanted to do the New Testament with the evangelical component, nothing else. Um, and, you know, I was very supportive of him that entire year. Um. But, you know, I'd obviously crossed a line with him.

Robert Klein: How did your differences get resolved?

Jim Beverwyck: They got resolved through the assistance of the Peace Corps.

Robert Klein: Oh.

Jim Beverwyck: I was so upset.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I said, look, I told my wife and I told my colleagues I'm not coming back until this is resolved. I was really disturbed, and so was the headmaster, as it turned out.

Robert Klein: Did you take off and go to Nairobi?

Jim Beverwyck: I don't know how we contacted Nairobi. I think we must have gone to Kisii or hitched a ride somewhere.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: To a telephone. There may have been a, there was a shortwave radio somewhere. Maybe I used the shortwave radio. Shortwave something.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And I arranged for Bob Siegel, who was I think the deputy director. I said, look man, you know, I'm really bummed. I was pretty depressed I think. I think I may have been feeling depressed. I'd made this commitment and I felt betrayed, blah, blah, blah. You know, all of that. And I was young.

Robert Klein: To that point, you had had virtually no contact with the Peace Corps office, right?

Jim Beverwyck: That's right.

Robert Klein: You were out there and they knew nothing. You didn't report back to them at all?

Jim Beverwyck: Not at all. There had been no, no official contact for sure. I think there may have been two trips into Nairobi to pick up books. And then we did our outbound safari thing on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I don't know if that was the first year or the second, but we had one of those big projects the first year. So there was contact with Peace Corps, but never, hey look, you know, I need some help. And Bob Siegel goes out in his Toyota Land Rover and his cutoff, you know, his, his British shorts and his safari jacket. And I was like, Bob. He was a good guy. And, uh, he listened well. He did. He listened well. And I found myself, um, when I think back on that experience, venting. And he was taking it for me. And then in a very mature way, far more mature that I could have pulled off, he arranged for a meeting with the headmaster. He talked to the headmaster, arranged for a meeting with the two of us. We came together and we talked. And I think I may have missed two or three days of school.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I looked at him in a new way, and I'm sure he looked at me in a new way. But we continued working together effectively for another year, year plus. But it was a painful experience. One of the, one of the most painful I've ever had, because I had so much invested I felt, you know?

Robert Klein: Uh huh.

Jim Beverwyck: And there was this nastiness. Where did that come from? Well.

Robert Klein: But there was, there was no feedback loop saying that you're doing a good job built into the school structure? I'm not suggesting that.

Jim Beverwyck: No, there was not.

Robert Klein: In effect, you were left alone to do all these things and you were asked to do a lot of things. But they weren't regular sessions where the headmaster would say, well, you've done this well and?

Jim Beverwyck: No. And he wasn't that kind of person, you know.

Robert Klein: No, and I, yeah, that.

Jim Beverwyck: A reticent and, uh, fearful little man who was, who was, you know, um, to be honest, out of his element professionally and mostly emotionally, because he was out of his tribal area. He was in, he was in enemy territory. And that was tough for him. It was tough for him. It was tough for his wife. It was tough for his, you know, his family.

Robert Klein: No, I was just suggesting that in the absence of that kind of, you know, ongoing relationship, it was at a distance to have certainly such a heavy critical.

Jim Beverwyck: It was, I mean, totally caught me by surprise.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah.

Robert Klein: And you must have felt that you were doing an incredibly good job.

Jim Beverwyck: I probably did.

Robert Klein: You were 22 at the time.

Jim Beverwyck: That's exactly right. You know, I'm, I'm sure I thought I was doing one hell of a good job, even though surely there was lots, lots of room for criticism and the constructive criticism wasn't there. And so, you know, over those long months, you could convince yourself that you were doing a hell of a job and that everybody loved you. And maybe they didn't, and surely they didn't.

Robert Klein: Yeah. We jumped toward the end of the first year. You did have some vacations during that first year?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, we did.

Robert Klein: One was you went on a safari?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, we went on safari. Let's see. What's the first thing we did? What was the first thing we did? I can't do that, huh? All right. Sorry. March. Oh, yeah, I think. Yeah, I know. First vacation from school, that month long break.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: We joined up with a couple in our program to go on a medical safari to the NFD, the Northern Frontier District, along what was then called Lake Turkana. And, uh, that's a wonderful adventure. The four of us. It was an inoculation project, inoculation against smallpox and TB. And we had a big Land Rover given to us by the government or Peace Corps, probably a Peace Corps, I can't remember. Big green thing. And a Turkana interpreter. So we had been trained for a few days in Nairobi by the doctor and some other medical personnel. And then were just thrown off into the NFD, and we met in Lodwar. I think we had a little bit more time there for training and then we were gone.

Robert Klein: You had never done any kind of medical work?

Jim Beverwyck: Nothing.

Robert Klein: And now you would learn to give inoculations.

Jim Beverwyck: Give inoculation, I think we did it here. And then we did smallpox thing.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: The little vials. And we had to keep things as cool as we could and blah, blah, whatever. And, uh. Trackless. No roads, nothing. I mean, many of those days in that month we were just going over sand dunes, but this kind of guy seemed to kind of know where we were going. And we did this. We inoculated more than 5,000 people. Families were encouraged to bring their, bring everybody in, especially the children, their babies. And we would do that every day in an elementary school, you know, a thatched roof place, sometimes right out in the open under a tree. And we just did it all day long with these Turkana tribespeople. Fabulous experience. It was, it was really, really wonderful.

Robert Klein: Then you had other vacations. Was there a major break between the first and the second year? Like more than a month?

Jim Beverwyck: No.

Robert Klein: It was always just a month?

Jim Beverwyck: Always just a month.

Robert Klein: That's right, three, three months, one month off. Yeah. What other travel did you do?

Jim Beverwyck: Let's see. Um. I think I may have told you briefly about Paula Hirschoff in Washington, D.C., this person we had reacquainted with last summer. We took a wonderful safari with, let's see, there was Paula, Mike Robinson, who was doing a year teaching in Kenya, who's at Harvard, was one of the early Black students at Harvard.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Um. Kerry and, Kerry Ahearn and his wife. And Mary and me in that beat up old Volkswagen. We did that for a whole month. We left Nairobi. We went to Kampala, we went to Queen Elizabeth. We went to the Rwenzoris. We climbed in the Rwenzoris where what's her name was working on the gorillas. We went to Rwanda. We spent the week in Rwanda. We went to Burundi, we went to Tanzania. We just made this giant loop and we had a busted windshield. And it was just a great, great time with friends and, uh, had one fight the whole, the whole time. Kerry Ahearn and I, he's at Oregon State University now. He and I had a battle in the bitching about something and but that was it. I mean, God, the food ran out. I mean, just all this stuff. Just a great safari.

We did another project. We, uh. Mary was pregnant and we were pregnant, and we went to Mount Kilimanjaro to teach at the Outward Bound school. And I think Mary was unofficial capacity because she couldn't be an instructor. She was a number of months pregnant. And I was an instructor and I had a group of kids and we trained and did all that. And we climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. And, you know, I had these teenage boys from all over East Africa. One of them was Milton Obote's son. And it was wonderful. I mean, it was just this great month long experience on the slopes of Kilimanjaro teaching kids.

Robert Klein: So now you're going back into the second year.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah.

Robert Klein: Mary's pregnant.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah.

Robert Klein: And what choices were you faced with? I mean, was it?

Jim Beverwyck: Well.

Robert Klein: Did, was Peace Corps willing to accept the fact that she?

Jim Beverwyck: Tamar was born in October, so we were pregnant in, what, February does that make it? January? Somewhere around there.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Um. Peace Corps. We informed them of our pregnancy. And they were, I think, yeah, they were, uh, with reticence, displeased.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: Because it was something, and we both felt that that they felt they had to deal with that was avoidable. Right. Avoidable. Number one, we didn't try to avoid it. Number two, we really wanted to do this thing. And so we were informed that, you know, if you aren't going to come to Nairobi, which we had told them we would not do, then we had to find a hospital that was to their liking. And to their liking meant that it had to have an incubator. And maybe something else. I can't remember. We did our own shopping around and we did find a place on Lake Victoria and, uh, we told them that that's where we were going to have the baby. We weren't asking for their approval.

I actually remember joking with Mary at night at home. What are they going to do, come and get us? Force us into one of their green Land Rovers and throw us in the airplane? What? What are we going to do? They're going to come out here and get us? I don't think so. You know, they've come here once in over a year.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: So that worked out. Yeah.

Robert Klein: And you were comfortable because Mary was comfortable?

Jim Beverwyck: I was comfortable because Mary was comfortable. And we got this cool little book. Today it would be called Lamaze, but it was not called Lamaze. And it's a little book by some British doctor. It's really totally outdated. But it was our little Bible, and we practiced. I was as prepared as I felt anybody could be to deliver a baby and. It's just a really beautiful experience.

Robert Klein: How did the students react to?

Jim Beverwyck: They loved Mary for it. Yeah. I mean, they talked about her being pregnant a lot. Just kept getting bigger and bigger. They were intimate with her about this. Just, uh, we can't wait. Having a baby is such a good thing. Yeah. My mother had some. All that.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And our, our relationship with the surrounding community became closer as a consequence of the pregnancy, and then dramatically more so after the birth of the baby.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. It was just a really beautiful time.

Robert Klein: And the birth went okay and?

Jim Beverwyck: Well, um, I don't know if Mary told you this, but, you know, the baby was supposed to be born on a certain date. I think it was October 15th or something like that. We found that out when we went on one of our two trips to this place, Kendu Bay, to have a checkup. We had two checkups. And we borrowed a friend's vehicle. It was a piki piki thing. It had a canvas top and it was one of the ag volunteer's. Four little wheels. It was like a golf cart. We drove that thing 100 miles to Kendu Bay. He lent it to us. You know, don't tell Peace Corps, okay? Yeah, don't worry, we won't.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And so somehow maybe he took us there or something, but we got, we had the, we had the examination. The doctor told us two more weeks. We went back to Kisii. We spent the night with friends in Kisii and we took the country bus back and it was very bouncy.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Got back home in the evening and she went into labor that same night. You've got to be kidding me. What are we going to do? It's 100 miles back there. We just came home.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: I think the baby's coming. So, um, we. We wanted for our friends up the road, volunteers, to take us because we really loved them. And they had a they had a Volkswagen bus. And the only way I could get up there was to talk to the missionaries. And the missionaries, oh, we'll take, we'll take you to the hospital. And Mary had told me, if they offered to take us to the hospital, you've got to tell them I won't go. You know, she was totally serious. She says, I'll just have the baby right here.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Before I'd go with those people. She really didn't like them.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: That's okay. So I made up some kind of lie about, you know, Rick was a medical person or whatever. And so seven miles up the road, seven miles back. Took about an hour and a half. And then we screwed around with Rick and Maggie drinking tea and laughing and. And then to the hospital, all the way out there. Fortunately, the Israelis had finished a section of highway between Kisii and, uh, Kisumu that made it a little bit faster. They had just finished that section of highway. So we got there about an hour and a half before the baby was born.

Robert Klein: Did you have visions of your delivering a baby inside the VW bus?

Jim Beverwyck: Absolutely, man.

Robert Klein: Yeah. And you were ready?

Jim Beverwyck: I was totally ready.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: I was totally ready. It was going to be perfectly fine. Nothing was going to go wrong. Nothing could go wrong. I knew it. And it didn't.

Robert Klein: This was fairly near the end of your service. You had about two or three months left.

Jim Beverwyck: We had three months to go.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Anything about the second year of teaching that was different and?

Jim Beverwyck: More relaxed. I got out more into the, myself into the, you know, the surrounding community. Well, surrounding community. It's hard to describe it as a community. It's just compounds all over. No village, just compounds all over.

Robert Klein: Did students say they wanted to take your home to show you where they were from?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. And I did that locally a number of times with the Kuria, but I accepted an invitation to visit friends along Lake Victoria. My excuse was that the father of one of these students, David Otieno's father, very traditional man, very, very beautiful, beautiful scars. He had about 50 scars on his face, geometric designs. Beautiful guy. He'd come to the school to talk with us, me in particular, about David and school. David wasn't doing well in school. And he wanted to know about that. And, uh, it was very difficult.

David was an older student, maybe 28, 29. And he'd been going to school on and off for years. You know, he'd leave for two years and collect enough fees from his relatives and working, come back for a semester, and then disappear again. And he was, you know, he was dumb as a rock.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: He's a nice guy. He was older than I was. So I was in this really strange situation, you know, talking about this student in little khaki shorts who's dumb as a rock and older than me.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: And, uh, I talked honestly with Dad. You know, look, you know, I don't think David should be a student because I know what the cost is to you. You'd run down the whole thing, how difficult it was for the family. And should this be happening? I think David was mentally retarded.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: So that happened. And then David subsequently invited me to spend time with him and his family at Lake Victoria. And so there were other of my students who lived near that Homa Bay, like Kendu Bay area. And, uh, they wanted me to visit too. So, yeah. So I planned this trip and I caught the country bus, showed up at this place, and the kids were at the road. You know, they'd been waiting there 6 or 7 hours, who knows? And I got off the bus and into the bush we go. And they were, they called each other brothers. They were three of them, but they're actually primos. They're cousins.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: And, uh, the compound. Wonderful compound. And you know, they set a little place aside in the special little place inside this thatched roof thing. I sat there in a wooden chair and people from the village came. And this is my mother. I remember. I remember. What was the boy's name? Francis. I think this is my mother. And then a little while later, there were six or seven people. This is my mother. Then there was this girl, about 14, and Francis about 18. This is my mother. Oh, my God. How many, how many mothers do you have? I have six mothers, you know. It was wonderful. I mean, we just had the best time. And then they made fresh eggs, egg omelet. I remember that. And I couldn't spend the night because I had to get to this other place. I had a beautiful time.

Then took the bus again closer to Lake Victoria and very, very dusty and very, very hot and got off at this place. And here's David and his brothers or whomever said, okay, we're going to go to my house now. So we started walking. Oh, man. It is only just over this hill. Yeah, it is just over this hill. And I could occasionally catch glimpses of the big lake. And we're in the middle of nowhere. I thought our school was in the middle of nowhere. This place was, we walked for 3 hours. Came over this rise, a bunch of little kids down there, they saw me, they scream. They're running like hell. What's the problem with those kids? They've never seen a white man. It's like we're really in the middle of nowhere.

We finally got to this place. There was a compound, Bob, that sat on the top of a cliff, a field on the top of a cliff.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: That went straight down about 200 feet to Lake Victoria. And the lake is like an ocean and it is lapping up on this cliff and it was spectacular. And there's this compound, this African compound right there.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Wow. God. And we had dinner and we talked. All the children of the village and the teenagers that came, we visited. It was beautiful. Next morning, got up before dawn. It was dark and these teenage boys came and it's time to go. And we worked our way down this really steep path to the lake. And there's this dugout canoe down there all painted, all sides. And we all climbed inside this dugout canoe. Just a solid dugout canoe.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: It must have been eight or nine kids and they started. And we're rowing up the lake and the sunrise coming up and they're singing. I loved it, man.

Robert Klein: And where, where did you finally go?

Jim Beverwyck: To the same spot.

Robert Klein: Oh.

Jim Beverwyck: The same spot where, where they'd let me off on the boat.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: We stopped and I walked, we went up another path, up the cliff face and walked over. And there was the bus, you know, an hour later and back to Taranganya we went.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah. So I spent time with the kids in their homes and.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And all of it was, uh, extraordinary.

Robert Klein: Well, as you came to, came to the end of the second year, what was your sense of what you had accomplished, what it was all about?

Jim Beverwyck: Well, it had become home.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: That little house and that place had become home. It had become our first home. And it would certainly become my first home because I had this very difficult upbringing.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: But it had become our first home together. Um. You know, we did the intellectual debate about what we're really doing teaching academic content areas to young men who had very little opportunity for gainful employment in Kenya. So what really are we doing? You know, we had the students who grew their fingernails long. I think it was their pinkie on both hands, real, real long to show that they weren't farmers. They were students. They were going to be professionals.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And of course, they. We knew that many would end up in Nairobi in the ghettos, joining the other hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men. We had that intellectual conversation a lot, and it was pretty attuned by the time we had been there two years and we believed it. I still believe it today, um, but maybe that's not what the experience was truly all about for us and for them.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, you have to be given a job to do. And we did that, uh, as conscientiously as we could.

Robert Klein: You must have felt satisfied.

Jim Beverwyck: Felt satisfied.

Robert Klein: I mean, you'd been in a difficult situation and.

Jim Beverwyck: And worked hard.

Robert Klein: It had become home and you had.

Jim Beverwyck: That's right. Um, yeah. And so, you know, that, that, that part of your job was bittersweet, but the ultimate experience was not bitter in any way. Um. The ultimate experience was beautiful. Beautiful. And we did have to leave. And the reason we had to leave was because we had the baby, the man said so.

Robert Klein: So you didn't really seriously think of doing a third year?

Jim Beverwyck: No. No. It was, you know, I mean, our clinic in Kehancha, four, four miles plus down the road gave malaria pills for a machete wound in the shoulder, you know, a panga wound.

Robert Klein: Yeah. What, did you have any plans leaving, I mean?

Jim Beverwyck: No.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Jim Beverwyck: We hadn't grown up yet, you know.

Robert Klein: Well, I'm curious. Where did you go back to when you came back to the U.S.?

Jim Beverwyck: Bangor, Maine, is where we landed. [to someone else] Who was that? Okay. [tape break] Bangor, Maine. And it was winter.

Robert Klein: Why Bangor, Maine?

Jim Beverwyck: It's where the plane stopped.

Robert Klein: Oh.

Jim Beverwyck: I don't know why the plane stopped there, but it did. And then we flew from there to Detroit.

Robert Klein: So you went back to Michigan?

Jim Beverwyck: Yeah, back to Michigan.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Detroit? No. Grand Rapids.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And we stayed with Mary's parents for three months.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Out of their great generosity. We had a brand-new baby and no prospects.

Robert Klein: Was, was, do you recall the shock of coming back?

Jim Beverwyck: Absolutely.

Robert Klein: Yeah. It was disorienting?

Jim Beverwyck: Most.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: Yes, I've said on many occasions it was the most, the closest I've ever come to depression was during that time, if in fact I was not depressed.

Robert Klein: How did you work your way through it?

Jim Beverwyck: Uh, necessity. And, and, you know, upbringing. It's like, well, if I don't do anything, what's going to happen to me? You know, there's nobody picked me up. Nobody ever picks anybody up the way I grew up, you know? So I'd better, you know, shit or get off the pot. And so we had, I went to Washington, D.C., with a Peace Corps sponsored two week reorientation thing.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Jim Beverwyck: And it was pretty much bullshit, but it was interesting. And I was with other returned Peace Corps volunteers who are in a similar situation, who also felt, as I did, they felt disoriented and out of touch and deeply longing for their time of where they had been, independence or whatever it was where they'd been. No job, no real job opportunities. I applied for a job in New York City. I had a good chance at that. And, uh, Mary had a good shot at a job in the hospital in Grand Rapids. In fact, she'd been offered a job, but we couldn't face living in Grand Rapids, just couldn't. Then we had the opportunity to come out west. There was a job opportunity in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and we followed up on it.

Robert Klein: And that was?

Jim Beverwyck: So we drove out here with the baby in the back seat and interviewed for the job, drove back to Michigan. A week or two later, they called and said, you got the job.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah. Anything else?

Jim Beverwyck: The rest is.

Robert Klein: Well, of course it's history.

Jim Beverwyck: History.

Robert Klein: It's good history.

Jim Beverwyck: Of course.