Ellen Shively Oral History Interview
Interviewer(s): Robert Klein
Interviewee(s): Ellen Shively

Robert Klein: Klein. Today is January 14th, 2003. I'm interviewing Ellen Shively, who was in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, 1966.

Ellen Shively: '68.

Robert Klein: 1968 forward. And you are?

Ellen Shively: Ellen Shively.

Robert Klein: OK. We usually start by going back to the time just before you joined the Peace Corps and then bring it up to joining.

Ellen Shively: OK.

Robert Klein: And if you want, you can put in a little bit of your family background and so forth, where you grew up.

Ellen Shively: Well, I'm a, I live in San Diego, California, and I grew up in a Navy family. My mother is a native here in San Diego and married a sailor. And I myself am a registered nurse, graduated from Florida State University. And when I was at Florida State, I joined the Army Student Nurse program and went into the Army for six and a half years as a nurse. At the end of six and a half years of active duty, I'd been stationed in Okinawa and we were getting a lot of casualties in from the Vietnam War, and I was reading the Stars and Stripes about the public outcry against being in Vietnam. And so I became disillusioned with the Army and decided to get out.

Robert Klein: OK. You were essentially a ward nurse during that time?

Ellen Shively: Yes, a medical surgical nurse.

Robert Klein: What originally got you into nursing? Any experiences in high school? Or had you done any travel, any volunteer work or anything?

Ellen Shively: Well, I had done some travel and liked the military and we were stationed as a family with the Navy, my dad being in the Navy in Japan. And some of my friends' fathers were doctors, Army doctors, and we had an Army nurse at our high school. So I wasn't prone to being ill, but I started in college as a PE major. But at Florida State they had a very strong nursing program. And I'd grown up Southern Baptist and I thought, well that's, maybe I'll be a medical missionary. So I went over to the nursing school one day and introduced myself, and she told me how to enroll.

Robert Klein: How long did you live in Japan?

Ellen Shively: Two years.

Robert Klein: And how old were you?

Ellen Shively: I was in high school. I was a sophomore and a junior. From '50 to '53 I think were the actual, well, years.

Robert Klein: But that was a completely a Department of Defense school.

Ellen Shively: Yes.

Robert Klein: So there weren't Japanese students.

Ellen Shively: No, no. It's Yokohama American High School.

Robert Klein: Did you have any contact at that time with Japan, Japanese culture? Any sense of, you know, that some other part of the world that wasn't American?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, we lived on the economy for, I'd say, the first six or eight months that we lived in Japan and we took trips as a family and a couple of student trips to various places. Went up to Tokyo, went down to Atami, Kamakura, where the great lying Buddha is. The church group at the base climbed Mount Fujiyama. So that was a good weekend experience. Everybody took the trains in Japan, so I think we didn't have TV. So we spent, uh, weekends poking around Yokohama.

Robert Klein: Did you have Japanese friends?

Ellen Shively: Yes. My family cultivated the friendship with a young man. His name was Kenji. And they corresponded with Kenji in subsequent years. And we would go on trips with Kenji and see his friends and where he worked and spent some time going to Japanese restaurants with him.

Robert Klein: Let's stop for just a moment. [tape break] We're talking about your time in Japan and then from Japan, you came back to San Diego? Or were you then college age and you went on to Florida?

Ellen Shively: Let's see. From Japan, we came to California. And I did my high school here in San Diego. Lincoln High School. And then my dad got transferred to Florida, and that's how I ended up at Florida State University. I did actually a year at San Diego State. And then I transferred to Florida State.

Robert Klein: Did you learn Spanish at all while living in San Diego?

Ellen Shively: No, not at the time.

Robert Klein: Yeah. So you became a nurse, went to Okinawa. Do you recall anything about Peace Corps or Kennedy during the sixties? I mean, you were in Okinawa then I suppose.

Ellen Shively: I would have, let's see. If it was 1961, I would have been graduating from college. My immediate assignments were in North Carolina, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And then I went to Hawaii, which is where I was born, for duty. I went to the same hospital that I'd been born in, Tripler Army Medical Center, and I did duty there. I actually was a public health nurse, Army health nurse. So I was stationed out at Schofield Barracks. And we had had friends, family friends from the past, that I reacquainted myself with and some local Chinese American Hawaiian people. So Hawaii was really a lovely assignment, but from Hawaii, I went to Okinawa and that was where the war was escalating, in my opinion. As far as the Peace Corps goes, being in the Army, I think I knew there was a Peace Corps, but I didn't know much about it.

Robert Klein: Well, the beginning and the excitement of the early '60s sort of, were you aware of it I mean?

Ellen Shively: Peripherally.

Robert Klein: And Kennedy's message of, you know, ask not.

Ellen Shively: Oh yes. Oh yes, we all knew that. And maybe that was from the medical missionary concept, you know, maybe that was in the back of my mind.

Robert Klein: So was that still an active idea when you were in Okinawa, that the choice might have been to become a medical missionary?

Ellen Shively: Maybe. Maybe.

Robert Klein: But clearly you didn't want to continue being an Army nurse.

Ellen Shively: Right. And I said, I've got to get out of this War Corps and there was the Peace Corps, and I think I used that terminology. I want to leave the War Corps and join the Peace Corps.

Robert Klein: Oh, interesting.

Ellen Shively: I probably read an advertisement in a paper or saw something somewhere that.

Robert Klein: What did your family say?

Ellen Shively: They were cool with that. My mother had a wonderful attitude about travel. If dad came home and said, Patty, we have orders to go to Hawaii or Florida or Washington State or Tennessee, she would say, oh goody, let me look on the map and see where it is and when do we start packing? So our whole family had a very positive attitude about changing four schools in one year. It was nothing to us. We had a good family, tight knit family.

Robert Klein: And how many siblings?

Ellen Shively: Four of us kids.

Robert Klein: Brothers or sisters?

Ellen Shively: I was the third out of four. An older brother, six years older, who joined the Air Force. So we had Navy, Air Force, and then I went in the Army. The next four years older sister, who likes the fashion world and the business world and material things, and she's always gravitated toward the good life. And then a younger sister who, uh, who graduated from San Diego State in English and looked for a job in Southern California in 1970. And there was the peak of the baby boomers and couldn't find a job. So she answered a call to go to Australia, where they needed teachers thoroughly. And went there for two years and stayed up, stayed there, and she lives there to this day.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Can you move the mic around? I'm sorry.

Ellen Shively: Oh yeah.

Robert Klein: Yeah, it should be. OK.

Ellen Shively: Shall we do a test and see if it's?

Robert Klein: No, we're OK. But the War Corps, Peace Corps dichotomy didn't disturb your family, that you were sort of going 180 degrees?

Ellen Shively: No, I was that typical third child where the parents overcome the obstacles of the first two kids and the third one, no matter what they're like, is a piece of cake and slides through the slats. And so anything I did, they were pretty much for it.

Robert Klein: Do you recall the process of applying? I mean, did you gather information about Peace Corps or just sort of send off a letter and hope you'd be picked?

Ellen Shively: I think I sent a letter and I got an answer back that, yes, I could join with my qualifications. You know, you have to get referrals from people. So I got those and they said, yes, we'd like you to join a training group for Colombia, the country of Colombia.

Robert Klein: OK.

Ellen Shively: So I remember going to the Honolulu Library. I was living in Honolulu at the time. And uh, looking up Colombia and I read about the drug problems that they had and the machismo of the South American male. And I was a bit put off by Colombia, so I wrote back and said, no, I don't think I'm interested in going to South America. Where else do you have? And then a second reply came back, you know, we were all maybe a phone conversation. Maybe. Although I don't remember very many long distance phone calls, but maybe a phone conversation or a letter. I don't have it anymore. It said, what about Ethiopia? So again, I went to the library to look up, where in the world is Ethiopia? And I think most Americans knew one or two things about Ethiopia. They knew about Haile Selassie.

Robert Klein: Right.

Ellen Shively: And they knew about Abebe Bikila, the long-distance runner.

Robert Klein: Yes.

Ellen Shively: So I said, Ethiopia, that's the place for me. I think that I would like to go to Ethiopia.

Robert Klein: Were you a hiker then or did that come later?

Ellen Shively: Well, I was always an outdoors person. Growing up, we couldn't afford to stay in motels with all of our travels, so we'd stay in state parks and had a trailer. And did the. [tape break] So yeah, the outdoors life was part of growing up.

Robert Klein: Because isn't Addis Ababa twelve thousand feet higher or so?

Ellen Shively: Not that high.

Robert Klein: Ten thousand?

Ellen Shively: It's, uh, Addis Ababa is, yeah, it's on the high plateau, I guess you'd call it.

Robert Klein: Yeah. And did you have a sense, some sense of the project you were being asked to join, other than the location?

Ellen Shively: Yes. Well, I'd asked to go as a nurse.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK. Yeah.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, as a registered nurse. I think some of the projects. There was a malaria control project, and I think there was a trachoma for the eye project. But I'd say 100 percent of us in the nursing area went to dresser schools. They told us about dresser schools. So we're teachers in a dresser program. And dresser, as far as I can tell, is an English term, a World War I term, that means medical aid, medical assistant, nursing assistant. And later found out that in Ethiopia, it's the Ethiopian equivalent to an LPN, licensed practical nurse, licensed vocational nurse.

Robert Klein: So you finally sorted it out with Peace Corps which project you were going into. Packed everything up, which should have been no problem for you.

Ellen Shively: Right.

Robert Klein: You'd been doing it all your life. And where did you go for the training?

Ellen Shively: Well, the first place we met was Philadelphia, some large hotel in Philadelphia. I think we stayed there for probably five or six days.

Robert Klein: Was it a complete nurse program that you would?

Ellen Shively: No.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK. What was it?

Ellen Shively: No, it was. Well, I don't even know if it was all Ethiopia anymore. Because it seemed like there were a lot of people in the room, many more people than went to our training group. So I think it was an all Peace Corps volunteer staging area.

Robert Klein: OK. What year was this?

Ellen Shively: Would have been '68. Probably March of '68.

Robert Klein: OK.

Ellen Shively: And it seemed to me like other than orientation into what is the Peace Corps and some filling out some questionnaires, is this what you really want to do? And these are the consequences and talk about it in round circles. It seems like one of their weeding out objectives was to give us a five dollar bill and say, you're going to spend two nights away from here. Or three. It was either two or three nights in this block in Philadelphia and they had a grid. And I was to stay in the confines of one block and I was to come back on the third day. So two nights out. And it was a survival test. So that's what we did. We were each one individual. There weren't teams.

Robert Klein: Just by yourself?

Ellen Shively: By myself. Five bucks. See you on the third day from now.

Robert Klein: I never heard that.

Ellen Shively: And I did it.

Robert Klein: Yeah. What did you do?

Ellen Shively: Well, it was pretty interesting. I remember sitting on the steps of a large cathedral and wondering, um, you know, where was I going to spend the night? So Philadelphia has these row houses. So on my block were some row houses and there was a woman standing, a black woman standing at the mailbox, and she had a letter in her hand. And I walked by and I said hello and we exchanged some, uh, greetings. And she said, can you read this letter for me? And it was a call to jury duty. And she said, well, I'm 83 years old and I don't read or write, and I don't think I should be on a jury. So I wrote a letter for her to.

Robert Klein: Did you go to her house?

Ellen Shively: So I said to her, uh, I told her what I was doing, and I asked her if I could give her a dollar and a quarter and could stay the night at her house. And she let me do that.

Robert Klein: That's wonderful.

Ellen Shively: She said, my son will be home at 5:30 or so. Come back then. And so I did, and I stayed the first night with her. And the second.

Robert Klein: And you wrote the letter for her?

Ellen Shively: Wrote the letter. Very pleasant. And the second night I said, well, I can't do this two nights in a row. So the second night I found a flophouse hotel. And uh, so I stayed there and I remember the man above me was a peg leg. So he'd walk around and he'd go, step, thump, step, thump, step. Scared me to death. I was afraid he was going to come down and he'd have a black eye patch.

Robert Klein: Captain Hook.

Ellen Shively: So yeah, it was sort of like the Outward Bound solo where you're on your own.

Robert Klein: But in an urban setting.

Ellen Shively: Uh huh, in an urban setting. And so I just walked the streets for those two days. I remember some outdoor markets. It was not a threat to me for some reason. I guess I was secure enough. Well.

Robert Klein: How old were you?

Ellen Shively: Let's remember now that I've been in the Army six and a half years.

Robert Klein: Right.

Ellen Shively: So I wasn't 21 years old right out of a college. Uh, let's say a Lutheran college in the Midwest, so to speak.

Robert Klein: Well, I was going to ask you about your impression of the others in the group with you at that point. It must have been a big mix.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, it was. I was probably one of the older ones. Yeah. Because I think I probably was 28. Yeah, 28. I think I was in the Peace Corps 28 through 30. Yeah. So I was probably 28 years old and there were a lot of the right out of college. But having been in the Army, I was used to young people. You know, the younger people.

Robert Klein: Was there talk at that point in the group, when you went in the circles and everything, were there young men there who were trying to avoid the draft?

Ellen Shively: Oh yes.

Robert Klein: Because this was.

Ellen Shively: Oh yeah.

Robert Klein: Did you have any particular reaction to that or?

Ellen Shively: Well, remember, I'm out of the War Corps into the Peace Corps mentality now. And I had some feelings about going to Vietnam, even though later on I went myself. But um, yeah, I probably actually did have a little reserve saying, you know, this is a national effort, but I didn't vocalize it a lot. But I think I did stand out as probably more starchy and more regimented in my thinking than the average. But I didn't hold it against them, I remember that. I probably was puzzled, having grown up in the military and having been in the military, I was probably a little puzzled about it. But I had enough exposure to non-military types.

Robert Klein: But even someone coming with six years of life experience beyond college would have, you know, there might be some differences between those just out of college.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, there was. And I, you know, I felt a little bit on the periphery. Yeah. I didn't feel quite as carefree as I thought.

Robert Klein: After this wonderful Philadelphia experience, what was next?

Ellen Shively: Oh, we went to the Virgin Islands, Saint. Let's see. We went to Charlotte Amalie was the name of the town. We flew there.

Robert Klein: At the end of this Philadelphia thing were you told, well, you're in the Peace Corps and you're on your way to train, to become? So did you know the project?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, I think I knew I was going to go to a dresser school. Yes.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK.

Ellen Shively: But they gave us. I remember at Philadelphia right at the end, they said, OK, there's no involvement. This is on the government if you want to turn around and go home. And a lot of people decided that this wasn't for them at that point.

Robert Klein: After Philadelphia?

Ellen Shively: Mm hmm. So they went home. So then we got on this Caribbean Airlines and I still remember the turbulence in the air and we all looked at each other like, what's holding this plane together? And are we going to get there in the plane or are we going to get there in a parachute? It was pretty exciting. And so we were on the major Virgin Island with Charlotte Amalie was the town, and I think we were there for six weeks. So we went out of the town to the other side of the island, to a little old, I think was an old army camp or something like an army camp would be. It was long buildings where we all stayed in bunk beds.

Robert Klein: It sounds like a barracks.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, like an old barracks. And it was on a hillside. And this great, beautiful, sparkling Pacific Ocean in front of us. And Mandalay Bay or Mandahl Bay was a Sunday excursion that we all looked forward to because we didn't go swimming. I mean, we worked six and a half days a week. We were in training.

Robert Klein: Doing what?

Ellen Shively: It was culture immersion and language immersion, and then some psychological circles sitting around. I remember they had facilitators and one of the facilitators that asked posed this question to us. What impact will you have on your country, on this country that you're going to? For me, I was a registered nurse, so you're going to go in and you're going to teach these people how to improve their health. You're going to prolong their life. You're going to help them have healthier babies so the population will explode. And are you willing to take the consequences of the impact that you'll have on this country? I remember that posed as a question. The other part, the language immersion, was fun. We literally buried English. So we had a little ceremony one day where we took a shovel, and for three days we were not to be allowed to speak one word of English.

Robert Klein: Wow.

Ellen Shively: Now the language teachers were brought over from Ethiopia, and I still remember them. They came up and walked up the hill and they had their shammas wrapped around them. So they look like biblical characters. The shammas is the blanket like coat that's worn in Ethiopia, covers the head and the shoulders, and it's a blanket. There are different weights of the blanket. And in the mist of the morning, I still remember these five or six people coming up dressed in their national dress and appearing before us as though they were two thousand years from the past and they were to be our language teachers. And I still have a vivid memory of the first impression of that.

Robert Klein: And the language being?

Ellen Shively: The language they taught us was Amharic. And that's the national language of Ethiopia. It's not the most populous tribe, but it was Haile Selassie's language and so it was the official government language. Turned out where I was sent was a Tigrinya speaking area. But anyway, we learned the basics of Amharic, and they used the technique of mimicking and drama and pointing. And so, for example, I still remember the teacher pointing to what's in front of us now is a terepeza. And so the theory was that you didn't learn to translate. We didn't want to say this is a table. Yihi terepeza. Ya terepeza. So we learned. And to this day, I don't think, when I'm thinking about Amharic, I don't think table. I think terepeza.

Robert Klein: Hmm.

Ellen Shively: And then she would get us up there and she would talk about the morning and so she would hold her hands out and she would point the finger coursing over the course of the day. And she would say in the morning is la ansat. So everybody knew that was morning and then evening time. So we got the idea of the day, time.

Robert Klein: Now this was just a three-day intensive? Or did it continue?

Ellen Shively: Oh no, it was. No, it was probably five weeks.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK. But it started with the burying thing.

Ellen Shively: We buried English for three days.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK.

Ellen Shively: Yeah. And we don't use a lot of English in our classes.

Robert Klein: And the group you were working with, was it all the dresser program or was it a mix?

Ellen Shively: No, it was mixture. Community organizing and water resources and teach, regular school teachers. And so, yeah, we didn't have. Once we get to Ethiopia, we divide it off for some dresser training. But in the Virgin Islands, it was, we were mixed.

Robert Klein: So in an ordinary day, say like in the third week of training, how much time was being given to language training as compared to area studies and the other stuff?

Ellen Shively: Quite a bit. I had a fairly decent foundation in Amharic. I could go to the marketplace.

Robert Klein: Well, were you told that you were going to be tested and that's part of selection?

Ellen Shively: Well, you know, this test that I hear about other people, we never. I think we did go in front of some people and they asked some questions, but it wasn't a matter of being deselected if you didn't master the language. Well, one of the reasons being that we knew we were teaching in English because English is the medical, the uniform medical language in Ethiopia. The doctors were from East Europe. The nurses were, many of them were trained in Lebanon, Beirut. American University in Beirut. So they had to have a universal language and English was the medical.

Robert Klein: So you were aware of that.

Ellen Shively: Yeah.

Robert Klein: Were there separate psychiatric interviews or have they given it up by then?

Ellen Shively: I think maybe a psychologist was there, but that was.

Robert Klein: The circle.

Ellen Shively: In the circle where we were given these challenges. We had some culture and then we had a team building, team building, and maybe there was a psychologist overviewing. But I was never aware that we were being psychoanalyzed. Although some people, you know, they've broken the training and they said, this isn't. I can't take this. So maybe there were psychological interviews for them. But I don't ever remember going to a psychiatrist.

Robert Klein: So being selected wasn't an issue. You mean you were pretty well convinced that you were in?

Ellen Shively: For me, yeah. And I was comfortable with the prospect of two years overseas.

Robert Klein: But was it a cloud over the training? Who's going to go, who isn't?

Ellen Shively: For some of them. There were people who, I still remember a woman very doubtful whether she wanted to be a part of this. So people left, you know, on a weekly basis from the training.

Robert Klein: And it didn't, it wasn't wrenching? I mean, oh my God, they're taking so-and-so away kind of.

Ellen Shively: Well, not for me. I mean, I've been in the Army, so I was used the people coming and going out of my life.

Robert Klein: The team building activities?

Ellen Shively: Other people might have.

Robert Klein: Yeah. What were the team building activities?

Ellen Shively: Well, I remember there was some kind of a business and we were making widgets, and I think they wanted to make us aware of competition. We were given a project to produce widgets and we had to devise how we could produce these widgets. And the exercise at the end, the psychologist I guess it was or whoever was in charge of it, said now this group was very intense on the product, whereas this other group was very intent on the process, you know, bringing everybody in. And so it was very enlightening for us to see how we reacted under pressure to produce something.

Robert Klein: Uh-huh. And the entire training was six weeks?

Ellen Shively: In the Virgin Islands. Now it continued once we got in the country, once we went to Ethiopia.

Robert Klein: How did it wrap up in the Virgin Islands?

Ellen Shively: Well, we made our decision whether we're going to stay or go.

Robert Klein: OK. And was there a closing ceremony or just last day kind of?

Ellen Shively: Oh, I don't remember a ceremony.

Robert Klein: Then what happened?

Ellen Shively: Then we got on a plane and went to Ethiopia, to Addis Ababa.

Robert Klein: From Virgin Islands?

Ellen Shively: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: What about, at what point? Hmm?

Ellen Shively: I don't remember any home leave.

Robert Klein: When did you pack for overseas? I mean, didn't you have to take, you know, enough handkerchiefs for two years kind of thing? Or was that provided? You could get it once you got in country?

Ellen Shively: Um, I don't remember a whole lot of luggage when I got to Addis Ababa. I think I had a suitcase and a backpack, so I don't. I might have come home. I don't remember that. I can't remember if there was a little interval where they said, you go home for 10 days and then we'll see you at the New York airport. Because it seems like that would be very expensive. I think once I started the training, the expectation was that I was going to Ethiopia. I think. I think so.

Robert Klein: And there was a big screening out that happened in Philadelphia, so the numbers kept going down. And then more. Was it a charter flight?

Ellen Shively: Hmm. Maybe.

Robert Klein: Well, that's OK. You got to Ethiopia.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, we got to Ethiopia, stayed in a hotel.

Robert Klein: You're in Addis?

Ellen Shively: We were all, yeah, we were in Addis. And resumed some training there, some more language.

Robert Klein: What was your first impression? I mean, now you're finally in the country where you're going to be serving. Do you recall your initial reaction?

Ellen Shively: They characterize Addis Ababa as a large village. A city that's a large village. And I remember walking on the streets and, you know, right across the border here in San Diego is Tijuana. So I think I had some acculturation from that, from living in Japan, which was early fifties. From Okinawa, which is up. [tape break] Shocked at any conditions, but I think the poverty and the lack of infrastructure, the limitations on drinking the water. The people still in their, most of the people still wore their native dress, even in the city.

Robert Klein: Were there a large number of Americans in and around Addis? Because Peace Corps was pretty big by then.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, Peace Corps had a presence, a large building, but there were a lot of Ethiopians working there. A large presence. I don't remember seeing, for example, a British colony or an Italian colony in Addis Ababa. I think there was a French school, but you didn't see too many Americans. Now we were all in a hotel. I think it was for foreigners. I still remember that very vividly. Um. And we had our training in another hotel I remember on the rooftop. The weather was wonderful. It was summertime, so we did our training on a rooftop. Yeah. So I wasn't impressed by a large number of foreigners. As a dresser program, we did tour some hospital that had been built by the Seventh Day Adventists. That was good. Yeah, we saw some hospitals.

Robert Klein: So you remember who the director of the project was at that time?

Ellen Shively: Uh, let's see. David Levine comes to mind. I think he was the Ethiopia director.

Robert Klein: He would have been the country director. And then there was someone who was directing or heading the dresser project.

Ellen Shively: Could have been a woman by the first name of India. She might have been the dresser coordinator.

Robert Klein: So once you got to Ethiopia and you were in the hotel and you began further training, were you then training just with the dresser group?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, we divided off. Yeah, I don't remember any community developers or high school teachers or anything. I think we were 12 nurses, 12 of us, all going to dresser.

Robert Klein: All women?

Ellen Shively: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: Did you continue the language training or was it expected that you'd just go out in the streets and talk to people?

Ellen Shively: No, I think we continued the language training. I still remember that.

Robert Klein: Yeah. How long was the in-country?

Ellen Shively: Probably another three or four weeks. I remember for some reason we went to Dire Dawa. I think we went to see the hospital in Dire Dawa. And there was a leper hospital facility we toured. You know, Dire Dawa is pretty far east, so that was pretty far away. So that was a real treat to go to Dire Dawa.

Robert Klein: Did you fly?

Ellen Shively: We were all. We were all nurses. I think the nurses went there. Yeah, we flew there. And stayed in another hotel, had some more language training, and toured these hospitals. So that was probably about three weeks, I guess.

Robert Klein: Was there a clear sense emerging of what the project was going to be? You know, there was a job for you and you'd be expected to be doing this.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, we were going to teach dressers. Oh yeah, we went to a dresser program. We went to a dresser school.

Robert Klein: To observe or?

Ellen Shively: To observe.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK. One day or?

Ellen Shively: Probably. No, two or three times.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm. Were you champing at the bit by then saying, you know, enough already? I'm trained, you know, turn me loose.

Ellen Shively: I think so.

Robert Klein: Yeah, yeah. And this training camp finally comes to an end. And what's the next step?

Ellen Shively: So then we got our assignments. And I was assigned to the Etege Menen Hospital Dresser School in Asmara, Eritrea, which at the time was part of Ethiopia.

Robert Klein: OK.

Ellen Shively: Etege Menen Hospital. So up I went.

Robert Klein: Is Asmara on the coast?

Ellen Shively: No. That's Mitsiwa. Yeah, Asmara could be called a mile high city. It's something like five thousand feet high. Probably 100 kilometers from the coast, from the Red Sea.

Robert Klein: Now that was formerly an Italian colony, right?

Ellen Shively: It was formerly an Italian province.

Robert Klein: So you didn't know Tigrinya or Italian?

Ellen Shively: Right.

Robert Klein: OK. But you did know medical English.

Ellen Shively: I knew medical. I knew English. And I knew more Amharic than I would need for the next two years. Because most of the people in Eritrea were not interested in Amharic. They didn't want to speak Amharic. As you recall, the Tigrinya speaking provinces were not treated equally in Ethiopia. Haile Selassie himself was an Amhara and the Tigrinyas, you would probably call it today a quota system as far as opportunity goes. So at the University of Addis Ababa, they had a very low quota for Tigrinya speaking Eritreans. They were, there was animosity between the two groups.

Robert Klein: And you were aware of all this through training. Who made the decision as to where the nurses went? Was it an Ethiopian decision or was it a Peace Corps decision?

Ellen Shively: Oh, I couldn't answer that. We were working for the Ministry of Health.

Robert Klein: OK. How were you being paid, by the way? By the Peace Corps?

Ellen Shively: Um, I think so. I think we were paid by the Peace Corps.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Living allowance of some sort.

Ellen Shively: Yeah. And they kept about a third of it back for the relocation allowance.

Robert Klein: Going to Asmara, is it?

Ellen Shively: Asmara.

Robert Klein: Did you go with everything you'd need to set up housekeeping or, again, were you going and that would be done once you got there?

Ellen Shively: That would be arranged once I got there. That wasn't prearranged.

Robert Klein: Did you go out alone or with others?

Ellen Shively: There were two other nurses, or maybe just one. There were, um, Mekelle is the next Tigray province down. And so I think that we all want to Asmara and then these others had to go by bus to their smaller dresser schools. I was rather centrally located in Asmara.

Robert Klein: But you were the only Peace Corps nurse.

Ellen Shively: No, there were two of us I think.

Robert Klein: Oh, they were, OK.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, there, actually. I guess I don't remember one year to the next, but I think there were three in the beginning. But Jane only lasted a period of weeks and she was gone. She went home.

Robert Klein: And she had come with you?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, she went through all the training, got to Asmara, saw what it would be for two years. I think she left a boyfriend back on the East Coast somewhere, and she just said, I'm not going to stay. So she left. But the other one is Lorraine, and she and I were. We did the whole two years.

Robert Klein: Talk about how you settled into being in Asmara, where you lived, and who you were accountable to, and how you sensed what the job was.

Ellen Shively: Yeah. Well, we lived in a hotel in the beginning and went to the dresser school and my chief teacher's name was Mullah. And she was the head of the school, and, uh, so I was told that I would be teaching anatomy and physiology and beginning sciences. Um. And I started the year with them, so I think I started right at the beginning. But the interesting thing is they use syllabus, a syllabus, syllabi to teach their courses that had been developed by a couple of nurses before me and the school was still using them.

Robert Klein: American nurses?

Ellen Shively: American nurses had been at that school before me.

Robert Klein: Peace Corps?

Ellen Shively: Mm hmm. Yeah. So they were used to the Peace Corps nurses.

Robert Klein: So you had a pretty good guide as to what you should be teaching?

Ellen Shively: Right.

Robert Klein: Anywhere in training, did they expose you to instructional principles or how to organize, to teach or?

No. Not really. So you had never taught?

Ellen Shively: Nah.

Robert Klein: You'd been a student, but.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, I'd been a practicing nurse, a student and a practicing nurse. In retrospect, I wish I had brought more textbooks with me to fill out the curriculum. Because the curriculum, the syllabi, were pretty simple. And uh, so I found myself, you know, what do I teach next?

Robert Klein: How did you take to the teaching role?

Ellen Shively: Oh, it was interesting. I probably made some boo boos and did some poor choices. But the students were eighth grade graduates of the Ethiopian school system, and they had started their English instruction at the fifth year of school, so they had three years of English behind them. And I think I wasn't sensitive enough to non-English speakers. I learned to simplify my language for, um, some of the slower students. And you could tell in their responses to certain, to what you taught. Did you comprehend this? And of course, they would nod yes, but sometimes they didn't.

Robert Klein: Yeah, yeah. Were they all women?

Ellen Shively: No. The first year was mixed. Second year, they put me in charge to develop an advanced dresser program, because I was one of the few nurses that had a bachelor's degree in the country. And so I worked on advanced. And the decision was made that only men would be advanced dressers. So there was one girl who had gotten in as an exception policy. Her father was an influential mufti. Mufti, the Muslim religious leader in the community. And so he got his daughter as an exception to the rule. So she was the only female in this all boys class of advanced dressers.

Robert Klein: Well, let's go back to the first year. You didn't stay in the hotel.

Ellen Shively: No. Let's see. My first. My first place was a little kind of a hut hollow thing in Asmara. Asmara had another very prominent institution in town, and that was an American Army base called Kagnew Station. And I found out that Kagnew Station was sort of a listening post to the Arab world. They had a big, what do you call those big?

Robert Klein: Dishes?

Ellen Shively: Dishes, yeah, so they would listen in on radio and things. And so there was. I'd been an Army nurse, so I went over one day and introduced myself to the chief nurse. And there was an Army nurse and there was a, right two blocks behind her there was a place that I rented. And it was, um.

Robert Klein: Off the base?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, oh yeah. It was off the base and it was like two rooms. And so I stayed there for six or eight months or so.

Robert Klein: What did you do for food?

Ellen Shively: Well, let's see. Um, there was an Italian market. You know, Asmara is a big town. A lot of Italian influence. So there was a market that we got credit from. So I guess when we get paid, we'd go down and pay the bill. And so I had some just very elementary food. And then at lunchtime, there was a nurse's cafeteria. Well, there was an eating place, and I think I just probably brought a little sandwich usually with me. Eat there. And then at nighttime, there were some little Italian restaurants, and I guess I had maybe, uh, maybe a stove of some sort. I don't remember. I'm not much of a cook, and I don't. I hardly remember what I did. Oh yeah, I had these other. There were 13 Peace Corps volunteers in town.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Ellen Shively: There were like three nurses, and the rest mostly were high school teachers. So a lot of the times we would go to each other's place, you know, have dinner together.

Robert Klein: How far were you from the school where you lived?

Ellen Shively: Oh, it's probably a mile, mile and a half.

Robert Klein: How did you get back and forth?

Ellen Shively: Bicycle.

Robert Klein: So you bought a bike?

Ellen Shively: We all had bikes. Bought a bike.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Was there a Peace Corps office in Asmara?

Ellen Shively: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: Were you advised or were any guidelines set as far as your relations with Kagnew base?

Ellen Shively: Oh, we were advised. We were advised. Stay away.

Robert Klein: Any reason given or?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, they didn't want to ally us with any CIA, um, activities, any military, government, governmental affiliations.

Robert Klein: Right.

Ellen Shively: And I went over to the base occasionally, I must confess.

Robert Klein: Yeah, well.

Ellen Shively: Yeah. Socially there were Army nurses I got to know, and so I abused that somewhat. And actually, I got called in to the director's office one time for that.

Robert Klein: Oh you did? Who was that director?

Ellen Shively: I don't remember his name. I remember he was from St. John's University. I can't remember his name, but he strongly advised me to stay away.

Robert Klein: He didn't threaten you, though, saying you'll be on the next plane out of here?

Ellen Shively: He might have.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK.

Ellen Shively: They felt very strongly about it.

Robert Klein: Did it work the other way? There must have been some temptation on the part of soldiers based at the base to want to come out and socialize with the Peace Corps people.

Ellen Shively: Don't remember that ever happening.

Robert Klein: OK. They may have been under restrictions too.

Ellen Shively: Don't remember that happening. Now that one nurse bought me a turkey at the commissary once and we had Thanksgiving. But among Peace Corps. The nurse wasn't invited. Yeah, I still remember that.

Robert Klein: Was the turkey bugged?

Ellen Shively: I don't know. I don't think so. No, there wasn't much. One time there was an anesthetist nurse at the hospital and I said, would you like to come to Etege Menen to see how the anesthesia is given? So she went over there and I remember talking to her afterward and she said they're still doing the ether drip technique. We haven't used that in, you know, millennia at our hospital because they were using the machinery.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Ellen Shively: But yeah, I, um, I was told in no uncertain terms to curtail that, that going over there. So I did. I didn't go on the base.

Robert Klein: What was the living situation of the students?

Ellen Shively: Not very good. Most of, some of them lived with their families. They were given a stipend every month of about twelve dollars. And with that, they were to buy their food and their lodging if they needed to. So those who didn't live with their families, a lot of them would live together. And I remember going to one boy's house once, and it was just a small room about the size of a big bathroom. And the common food that they ate was sort of a bean curd dish called suwa. And I guess it had the protein in it that they needed. But yeah, but it was pretty meager for them.

Robert Klein: How did the students dress?

Ellen Shively: They just barely made it. They had a uniform.

Robert Klein: Khaki shorts or?

Ellen Shively: No, it was something like you would see in the operating room today here. It was cotton pants and a kind of an operating room top. So that was the dresser uniform.

Robert Klein: Within the culture that you sensed, was it prestigious to be in training for it to be a dresser or?

Ellen Shively: Oh yes. Yes. They felt very, very lucky. Jobs were not too plentiful, but they had to have some courage because their obligation was to go off to a dresser station, which was normally located in a village. And they were the first line of medical care, trained Western medical care, for a whole village. So they were given a lot of responsibility.

Robert Klein: Was there an existing network of local clinics, which is where the dresses would work?

Ellen Shively: Mm hmm. Would work. Now they didn't necessarily. They weren't necessarily assigned to an Eritrean clinic, village. Some of them would go all the way over to Harar, which is all the way across the country. And in fact, the sense was that they did send the Eritreans into Ethiopia. See, they all knew the Amharic language. The Amharic language was taught in the schools. So they all knew the Amharic language. Amharas didn't know Tigrinya language.

Robert Klein: So they were trilingual at least.

Ellen Shively: At least. A lot of the students knew.

Robert Klein: Probably knew some Italian as well.

Ellen Shively: Italian, and a lot of them had tribal languages.

Robert Klein: Aside from Tigrinya?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, there could be a language where as few as one hundred people spoke. And then there was a regional language, and then there was a, you know, it got bigger and bigger and more expansive all the time.

Robert Klein: Right. Did you visit out to any of the clinics?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, I went to one or two of the clinics to see the dresser stations.

Robert Klein: Your choice or just was expected of you?

Ellen Shively: Uh, I think it was expected. Oh, the students had two tracks actually. They could go to the dresser stations or they could work in a hospital on the nursing staff, as a nursing aide. So, you know, if they, well, they were usually assigned. They didn't have too much to do with the assignment, as I recall.

Robert Klein: And did you have anything to do about evaluating and recommending? You know, this is a person who's stronger in medical skills or more independent?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, we had a teachers conference. Now Mullah was the one who did the, who talked to the Ministry of Health more directly than I did, but we would have faculty conferences about the students and their skills. And it was small enough that everybody pretty well knew everybody.

Robert Klein: How many people were on the faculty?

Ellen Shively: Oh, probably four. Four of us.

Robert Klein: And how many were Peace Corps?

Ellen Shively: Two American and two Ethiopian. Both of them RNs. And Mullah had gone to the American University in Beirut.

Robert Klein: And Mullah was the head of the school?

Ellen Shively: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: So that's, yeah. So there were three Ethiopians in your work, immediate work environment.

Ellen Shively: Um.

Robert Klein: The two teachers plus Mullah.

Ellen Shively: Yeah. No. Mullah was one of those. So there were two, two of them and two of us.

Robert Klein: What did you do when you weren't teaching?

Ellen Shively: Preparation. Our preparation. Because the students had a lot of clinical experiences. So once we got them through the basics, and the basics were pretty basic, like teaching them how to use a telephone, proving the germ theory of disease. We'd do some experiments where you'd culture a wound or culture something dirty and put it in an incubator kind of a thing. And then put the penicillin on it and maybe see a hole where the other, where the bacterial growth was around the outside, but where the medicine was on the inside. Um, because some of them hadn't grown up with the Western concept of disease. So when I wasn't teaching, there was a preparation period. And then the nurses at the hospital were the direct supervisors of the students. But we would go and see how things were going at the various assignments. So in the afternoons, that's where you'd be, you'd be on the wards, checking students.

Robert Klein: So they did classroom in the morning and then practicals in the hospital afternoons for the most part?

Ellen Shively: Right.

Robert Klein: So that put you in, you would follow, you'd be in the hospital as well. Did you get to, did you become friends with any of either the faculty or any of the staff of the hospital?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, yeah. You'd go over occasionally to their homes.

Robert Klein: And that wasn't awkward or?

Ellen Shively: No. No.

Robert Klein: 8 Yeah. Did you have a chance to get a sense of traditional beliefs in relation to health and body and so forth?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, occasionally. Somebody would tell a story about how somebody had been treated for this or that. Um, yeah, there was quite a little folklore. I guess we had it in training. I still have a really good booklet about some of the beliefs. For example, you know, the eyes. The flies around the eyes is a terrible problem in Ethiopia, and it leads to trachoma, which is an infection of the eyes. And so one of the, we found out that one of the local remedies or the national remedy was to put these slat slits, cut the skin and let it bleed. And that was supposed to drain out the infection, because blindness was just a terrible problem in Ethiopia. And you go into the villages and you'd see these kids with flies all over their faces and even adults who seemed to get used to it. So slitting the eyes and a lot of people walked around with those slits in their eyes.

Robert Klein: And then the scars would form.

Ellen Shively: Uh huh. Yeah. And another common local cure was for diphtheria. They would cut the uvula, which is that little thing that hangs down in the back of the throat. And a lot, a lot of children died from that. Cutting the uvula to prevent diphtheria. And then since death took over 50 percent of the children. By the time they're five, 50 percent were dead. Children run around and their head is shaved, except for this little clump of hair right about here. And the local belief is that when they die, the angel will have something to hold onto to take them up to heaven. Urinating on a rock on a full moon was supposed to prevent disease, any kind of urinary diseases.

There was one location that was famous for being able to set bones, broken bones. So if you had a broken bone, you would go to this one region and they were fairly successful there. They'd developed some good techniques, the local non-Western medical practitioners. And let's see, I don't remember much in the way of herbs being used for poultices and things like that, but I'm sure that existed. I just wasn't tuned in to that at the time.

Robert Klein: What about spiritual beliefs? Are there people who felt they were ill because they were being bewitched? In other words, there was a spirit of someone.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, we didn't use the word bewitched. But yeah, there were forces beyond your control that caused diseases.

Robert Klein: How did you deal with that in your teaching? Obviously, you're trying to take a rational American approach. You know, this is germs do exist and so forth.

Ellen Shively: Well, I think that they knew that that wasn't part of the curriculum. So I really don't remember much confrontation. Yeah. I think among themselves, they might have mixed some of the two.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Ellen Shively: But it wasn't like, for example, later I heard, if you go down to Mali and Botswana and some of those places, they have witch doctors down there who mix up a potion. But I didn't really see much of that in Ethiopia.

Robert Klein: And it wasn't any, little of it was being openly expressed in the classroom?

Ellen Shively: Little of it, yeah. Also, it's a great omission on my part, and I wonder today why I didn't know more about it, but you know, the female circumcision.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Ellen Shively: It's practiced in Ethiopia. Now, whether it was so accepted culturally that it just wasn't brought up as a medical problem that we discussed, or whether I was just oblivious to it, that I didn't even know very much about it to be honest with you. I didn't confront that, even in the ob- gyn experiences, when the kids, when the students would accompany the home health nurse for a home delivery. And I went a couple of times, I didn't see that as a factor. Maybe it's because I just I didn't put my face right in front of the opening where the delivery was very much. But it's there and were I to go today, I would certainly bring up discussions about it in the groups.

And it's one of those cultural things, though, where you've got to be very, very cautious about disclaiming it. But you can certainly bring up some of the consequences of it. I do that today, I'm, today I'm much more able to discuss these things. I think I had some, some, I didn't want to overstep my boundaries knowing that I was bringing in a new kind of medicine for people.

Robert Klein: That must have been built into training also, you know, you're defining a role with this awareness of traditional beliefs and local culture.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, I think some of the training covered that, but I don't think it was focused on it very much.

Robert Klein: You're in a more interesting crossroads of that because, you know, medicine is so specific. I mean, it's different if I'm teaching an English class. The cultural differences, you know, can be dealt with differently. But I mean, it can be just a direct clash when it comes to a science.

Ellen Shively: Exactly. Yeah. And um, you know, I think this open confrontation has really opened up since the sixties. For example, I remember in my early nursing days here in this country where somebody had a serious disease, you didn't always tell that person that they had that disease. You might keep it from them. So we were even suppressed in this country as far as just frankly discussing things.

Robert Klein: Yeah. This was the first year you were teaching the basic courses and supervising the practicals. Did you become friends with any of the students? Was that permitted, was it appropriate?

Ellen Shively: Well, not the dresser students, but almost all of us had a language teacher. So I had a Tigrinya language teacher. He was twelfth grade. He was Hilee. And Hilee and I would go for walks and into the city and he'd point out something and give me the name of it and all that. And of course, as a 12th grader, he was very interested in accelerating his English skills. So it ended up I was paying him to teach him English.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Did you arrange that on your own initiative or did Peace Corps say you should do it?

Ellen Shively: Well, the students got handed down from one volunteer to another, and I think Hilee got handed down, as I recall, because he was readily, he was right there. I mean, I didn't have to go searching for him. But in, you know, there were 13. [tape break]

Robert Klein: What finally happened to Hilee?

Ellen Shively: Well, he wrote me a letter after I got back. And he wanted me to sponsor him to come to the States. While we were there, he was interested in biking, bicycling, and he wanted to actually compete. Bicycles are kind of a luxurious form of transportation in a country that's as poor as Ethiopia. I remember learning a statistic like the average income for Ethiopian was 50 dollars a year. So there's not much money around. But he was interested in biking and I guess he was good at it and he wanted me to sponsor him so that he could eat better, so he could have more protein, more meat to eat. Which I, well, I paid him to teach me the lessons and I gave him a little bit of extra, but I didn't have a whole lot myself, so I didn't sponsor him.

Robert Klein: Did you have any health problems yourself during the first year?

Ellen Shively: No, no health problems.

Robert Klein: Were you vulnerable, with the bike was it? Were bikes stolen or was security a problem at all?

Ellen Shively: No, my bike wasn't stolen. I didn't stay in that little hovel. I eventually moved in with two other women. One was Peace Corps and one was a British volunteer. And we had a, oh, we just, we never had our bike stolen. But you'd asked something else I wanted to address. Um.

Robert Klein: What happened to Hilee?

Ellen Shively: No. Oh, did I have troubles with bicycles? I actually had an accident. My chain fell off when I was going down a hill and I ended up, uh, I guess straining my rotator cuff, which is the. I'll do it on this arm. It's easier. It's the one that allows you to move your arm around like a windmill. And to this day, I have a little trouble with it. So I had that injury and I walked around like this for probably 10 years before it ever got repaired. So that's the only trouble I had with the bicycle. I guess I went for about a year without riding in a vehicle, in a car, and then I guess I got in a car. Maybe we went to Addis once in the car. I don't know. Once a year or so we'd go up to Addis Ababa for kind of a refresher thing.

Robert Klein: The whole group would gather?

Ellen Shively: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. That was fun.

Robert Klein: So life was pretty simple. I mean, you didn't, no TV, no radio.

Ellen Shively: Had a radio.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK.

Ellen Shively: I remember the night the men landed on the moon. My cat had a baby in the bed and I woke up. My feet were wet because of having the baby. So I remember the moon landing. So I had a radio. Uh, had a tape player, one of those reel-to-reel things for music. But yeah, I guess we just talked most evenings. And there was a theater in town because it had been an Italian colony. So Asmara was a more. Addis Ababa was characterized as the village, a large village, and Asmara is characterized as a city, a small city.

Robert Klein: And there were restaurants

Ellen Shively: There were restaurants, yeah, and, uh, Italian food. So you didn't have to eat Ethiopian food all the time. Now a lot of volunteers in the smaller areas of Mekelle, they ate Ethiopian food a lot. I still get tickled at this one water resources fella. He had so much trouble with Amharic in training in the Virgin Islands. I mean, he could not get the concept. A year later, we saw him at one of these recall meetings. He spoke fluent Amharic, fluent Amharic, because he was thrown into a village.

Robert Klein: Live or die.

Ellen Shively: Well, yeah. So um yeah. Everyday life was actually pretty good. We, the water. Sometimes you'd have to save the water because it wasn't always coming through the pipes. But it wasn't a terrible problem. Hand washing the clothes. When we moved into it, when I moved in with those other two, life got pretty good because we shared so much and we had a house.

Robert Klein: Did you have a servant?

Ellen Shively: No.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK.

Ellen Shively: I hired on one woman when I was in the little hovel thing, but she was like taking my. I remember she took my firewood or something, so I said, oh, that's all right. There wasn't much to do anyway around my house.

Robert Klein: What did you do during vacations? There must have been breaks in the school.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, yeah. There was a regular school year. Well, between the first and the second year, these two guys and I decided to go to Kenya and I think we wanted to climb Kilimanjaro. So I had my old army boots I remember or I got them somewhere, and an army jacket and some khaki pants. And we climbed Kilimanjaro. They had jeans and heavy jackets, and one guy had cowboy boots. And we just went up there where you go to climb Kilimanjaro and there was a team going with porters and stuff, and we had backpacks and we just latched on. And I think we probably gave them a hundred dollars, maybe, and now people spend thousands of dollars. So we climbed that and went around Nairobi. Let's see.

Robert Klein: Must have seen some of the game parks.

Ellen Shively: Uh, yeah, we did. Saw some game parks. And we even flew. And I don't remember if it was like a Christmas holiday and not summer or what, but we flew to Madagascar. These two guys. We must have been good friends. I still keep in contact with them. Yeah. So we went to Madagascar once and stayed for about a week. Where else? Within Ethiopia, there were some amazing cities that we got to see. Lalibela.

Robert Klein: Yeah, I haven't seen it yet.

Ellen Shively: Home of the monolithic churches. Axum, the old capital of Ethiopia and it has the stone obelisk. Yeah, that was really wonderful. And I think it's called the Church of the Queen Mary or something where the Ark of the Covenant is supposed to be sequestered and one monk devotes his whole life to guarding that.

Robert Klein: You take a lot of pictures?

Ellen Shively: Not a lot. Oh yeah. One time we climbed. Another group climbed the highest mountain in Ethiopia. It's called Ras Dashen [or Ras Dejen]. And that was a 10-day trek. And that was a, that was a walk through.

Robert Klein: Ten day?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, that was a walk through time. I'll tell you, some of these villages were very mountainous, of course, and I think Ras Dashen is ten thousand feet high, not too high. But, you know, bartering for food with the folks and in turn giving them metal containers so that they could carry water. The metal containers were quite sought after and then we'd get, maybe they had a lamb, so they gave us part of the lamb.

Robert Klein: Were there any restrictions on your travel from Peace Corps?

Ellen Shively: Well, we couldn't go to south Africa. Couldn't go down there. That was our restriction. But as far as in country, no. No restrictions.

Robert Klein: And Saudi Arabia or anything, but not that anyone would want to go. But who knows?

Ellen Shively: Didn't want to go.

Robert Klein: The Near East?

Ellen Shively: No, not at that time. Not that I know of. Yemen. Yemen was right across the Red Sea, but nobody ever went over there for some reason. Nobody that I know of.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Ellen Shively: And I don't even know of any, you know, you could literally take a ferry from A to B to get to the other side, but nobody that I know of ever did it. At the airport in Asmara, sometimes you'd see the Yemeni people, but I don't know anybody who tried. I guess Ethiopia was interesting for us and Kenya would have been interesting. So I think we just didn't know much about Yemen.

Robert Klein: As your first year came to an end, did you do any looking back, looking forward? You know, well, I'm doing what I hope to do. Or do you recall how it was?

Ellen Shively: Maybe some, I don't particularly remember any decisions being made. I was getting ready to get that advanced dresser program off the ground.

Robert Klein: So you knew that during the first year? They said next year you're going to.

Ellen Shively: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: Whose decision was that?

Ellen Shively: It was the Ministry of Health who wanted it.

Robert Klein: OK. And how were you picked for it?

Ellen Shively: I had the degree, a bachelor's degree. So I had quite as much education as anybody.

Robert Klein: So how was it different when you went into the advanced dresser program?

Ellen Shively: Well, it was different because I had nothing. I mean, no syllabus. No, they didn't. There weren't very many textbooks, you know, so. So I talked to some of the doctors and got the kids in on some of their physical assessment. So this one doctor taught a physical assessment program for us. But I had to, you know, do the transcribing. And in those days it was on a typewriter. I would usually type up the lesson after he gave it, and then we would send them into the emergency room and they'd learn suturing and triage in the emergency room.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Now these were people who had completed the basic dresser course?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, and they'd been in the field a couple of years so they were coming back.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK.

Ellen Shively: So they were an older group.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Did you enjoy that more?

Ellen Shively: Uh, maybe. Maybe. Somewhat more.

Robert Klein: And your living pretty much continued with the three of you living together?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, that was.

Robert Klein: Comfortable circumstance.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, one was a home EC teacher and the other was an English teacher, I think. And we had, you know, our group of 13 and we had some satellite villages with some of the volunteers would come in. So we'd see each other on holidays or even weekends.

Robert Klein: Did you feel that you were getting enough of exposure to Ethiopian culture or Eritrean culture in what you were doing and the role you were playing? Or was it an issue at all?

Ellen Shively: I don't think it was an issue. I was very task oriented, you know, I was there to do the dresser program. That's pretty consuming. You know, I taught in Tennessee a couple of years too and it's very consuming to be a teacher.

Robert Klein: Oh yes.

Ellen Shively: Prepare. I mean, you can't just stand up there unprepared. So, yeah, so that was. And trying to get enough resources to put a program together. I don't know my legacy of what I left. I'm not sure my syllabuses were used subsequent to that.

Robert Klein: So you ended up developing syllabuses for that, the advanced course?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, kind of an outline.

Robert Klein: Were you replaced when you left? Was there another PCV that came in?

Ellen Shively: You know, there wasn't an overlap. I didn't meet her. I didn't meet anybody.

Robert Klein: Yeah. So how did it play out as you came to the end?

Ellen Shively: Um.

Robert Klein: Did you get a class?

Ellen Shively: Well, the school year was over.

Robert Klein: Yeah, go ahead.

Ellen Shively: The school year was over so, you know, it's just time to go home. My two years were up.

Robert Klein: But you got one group through the advanced dresser course?

Ellen Shively: Mm hmm.

Robert Klein: You created a syllabus. But you didn't think in terms of what might happen the next year. That's not an accusation. I mean, whether you'd be replaced or what would happen to your syllabus or?

Ellen Shively: Um, let's see. So that was '70. Yeah, they were still sending people there. Yeah, I think I thought that I would be replaced, but I didn't look into it a lot. I wasn't into the politics of it.

Robert Klein: So you also didn't particularly think, well, maybe I'll do a third year so this thing really gets established.

Ellen Shively: No, I don't think so. I think I, two years was enough for me.

Robert Klein: And was there a life after Peace Corps?

Ellen Shively: Oh yeah. Three months later, I was in Vietnam.

Robert Klein: Oh.

Ellen Shively: I joined the Army. Joined the Army again. Well, I got back here very restless.

Robert Klein: Came back to San Diego?

Ellen Shively: Yeah, to this house. And uh, I just couldn't focus on anything very much. So I said, mom and dad, I'm going back in the Army. I'm going to sign up for Vietnam.

Robert Klein: Oh, interesting. But it must have been.

Ellen Shively: But my folks, they're like, OK.

Robert Klein: Yeah. And for you, I mean, were you in turmoil I mean?

Ellen Shively: No, no. You know, I said, you know, there's still this war going on. I'm a nurse and that's fine. I guess Ethiopia was one thing, but let's go on to the next thing now.

Robert Klein: So the common strain is, I mean, is your sense of yourself as a nurse with this competence in that?

Ellen Shively: Yeah.

Robert Klein: There's clearly great need in lots of settings.

Ellen Shively: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Robert Klein: And it was comfortable enough going back into the Army? Was that the point at which you, after Vietnam, you finally decided to stay in?

Ellen Shively: Well, I decided to, but they didn't let me.

Robert Klein: Oh, that's right.

Ellen Shively: So then I went back to, uh. While I was in Ethiopia, we had a visitor, a very interesting visitor. Her last name was Luce I think. She was related to Clare Boothe Luce somewhere. And this family had endowed Emory in a nursing program, and she told me that there was this program at Emory Hospital and the master’s degree. So through her influence, I applied and got accepted to Emory. So when I finished the Peace Corps. How did that work? Oh yeah, I think that Emory was full that year, the program I wanted, it was rehabilitation nursing. And yeah, I tentatively planned to go right into my master's program, but I didn't get accepted.

So I said, well, I'll go back in the Army and then come back to that, which I did. When I set two years block of time for the Army, one year in Vietnam and one year at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Fort Knox, Kentucky. Then it was time to get out. They weren't keeping nurses in. They literally said, no, you can't stay beyond your two-year contract in the Army. So then I reapplied to Emory and got in this time. So then I taught. I finished that one year and I taught there. And then I went to Germany to visit a nurse friend of mine, and I ended up staying, working in Germany for the Department of Defense at a high school. I was a high school nurse at Frankfurt for three years.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK.

Ellen Shively: Came back and joined the Army again, age of 40, and stayed until I retired.

Robert Klein: Did you do any teaching in your last Army stretch?

Ellen Shively: Formal program teaching? No, because I had done some teaching, but I didn't have a degree in education, nursing education. So I was clinical.

Robert Klein: Was there any continuing connection, involvement, communication with Ethiopia once you? Or Eritrea?

Ellen Shively: Well, I wrote to Hilee for a while, but when he wanted to come here, I think I was sort of afraid of that. So I. In 1984, somehow I got wind that some Eritreans wanted to come to this country, the International Refugee Committee or World, Church World Relief. I somehow I got wind that Church World Relief that I could sponsor a refugee. So I went down there and sure enough, they had a list. And I said I want to sponsor an Eritrean female to come here. So I did. They first wanted to put a Hmong family in my house of 11, a family of 11. Now I'm still in the Army at this time.

Robert Klein: Oh, OK.

Ellen Shively: So this is when I was stationed at Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Denver. So I did. I was assigned a refugee. Turned out she was a political refugee, couldn't go back to Ethiopia.

Robert Klein: She was Eritrean?

Ellen Shively: She was Eritrean and had been at university and got. By then, Eritrea had become a communist country. Haile Selassie was deposed in '74. Mengistu Haile Mariam took over, he was a lieutenant colonel in the army. Had a very mean regime. They call it the, there's a name for it. But she had got selected for school in Russia, spent a year, and on a vacation, went to Italy for a vacation and went to a convent and said, I cannot go back to Russia. So she was now persona non grata for Ethiopia. And so the nuns put her name in at the Church World Refugee Service, and somehow we linked up. So she was flown to Denver and I picked her up at the airport and she lived with me for about eight months until my assignment.

My four-year assignment was up and I had to leave Denver. By then, the refugee service was very good about getting her in a school, and she had a little Eritrean community that she got to know. So I put her up in an apartment and I left. And she ended up marrying an Eritrean man, and now they have two children. I keep in contact.

Robert Klein: Oh, you're in touch? Where do they live?

Ellen Shively: Denver and Aurora. On, um, what's the street? Well, I can't remember the street, but anyway. It's on the tip of my tongue, it's in my address book. And I've gone to see her twice. Two or three times. So now she has like a 12 year old and a ten year old. That's good. And then I sponsored another woman after that, or before that, or whatever. Before that, yeah, it would have been before. But she only stayed with me for about three months. And she met some people she wanted to move out with, some Eritreans, so she left. And then my last assignment. Very interesting story. I was an Army nurse, lieutenant colonel, and I was on the wards one day and a nurse came up to me. And she said, you know, down in maternity, we have a woman who is from Eritrea. And I knew this nurse. She said, I know you were there in the Peace Corps, why don't you go say hello to her?

So she was in labor. I walked in the room and I swear that there was an older Eritrean woman in full Eritrean dress by her bedside. And so when Astaire, I spoke to Astaire and I spoke to the woman and I spoke in Tigrinya. And Astaire was in a lot of labor pain, but her husband then was a soldier, an American. She told him and he found me. And she ended up living in my. I had a side apartment that I converted, was renting out. So she ended up staying there while he went off to recruiting school for about eight weeks, and she was just as happy as she could be. And so was I. It was really nice. And we're friends to this day.

Robert Klein: Oh, that's great.

Ellen Shively: Yeah. And we've kept up with each other.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Ellen Shively: So that's pretty much my post experience with Eritreans. There is a community in San Diego and I know they have. For example, there was a 30 year war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and most astonishing. By the way, there was no older woman in that labor room.

Robert Klein: Oh.

Ellen Shively: I saw her. And when Astaire looked at me, she thought I was an angel because I was all in white. She told her husband an angel visited me. And anyway, I guess the other nurse that told me about her told her, but um. What was I saying? Before that, my follow up here.

Robert Klein: Continuing involvement. The war.

Ellen Shively: Oh yeah. The war. The most amazing thing is that little Eritrea, which is a country of three or four million people, won over Ethiopia, a country of, well, when I was there, they said the population's anywhere between 12 and 21 million. Because they're all these little villages, they just couldn't get a hold on the population.

Robert Klein: I'm curious. When you went back into the Army having done the Peace Corps, did you mention that to your peers? I mean, how did people deal with War Corps, Peace Corps kind of thing?

Ellen Shively: Well, they didn't have to deal with as much as I did. You know, I began to see the real futility of war. I became an environmentalist because it's, you know, the, uh, the abusiveness to the environment of the war and the Army is terrible. And so my perspective was really one of, hey, you know, what about conservation? What about negotiation? So I seem to always have a history of being kind of outside the fence of whatever group I'm in. Growing up with the military, our roots weren't in these places. I was the outsider. And then I was the outsider in the Peace Corps because of my war and in the Army, I was the outsider because of my Peace Corps.

Robert Klein: I was wondering whether people looked at you askance because.

Ellen Shively: A little bit. And what I say is, is I think the Peace Corps probably influenced my thinking.

Robert Klein: Oh, I was going to ask that.

Ellen Shively: Very predominantly. Even in comparison to 20 years in the Army, I think the Peace Corps had a tremendous impact on how I look at things.

Robert Klein: But you brought a lot to the experience and sort of Peace Corps enabled you to express things that, I mean, you had within you. Yeah, I mean.

Ellen Shively: Another perspective.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Well, that's exactly.

Ellen Shively: It gave another perspective.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Is there anything else you'd like to say for posterity?

Ellen Shively: Join the Peace Corps. And war no more. This war that we're about to embark on, I think is completely avoidable. I'm absolutely. I think it's another example of misguided American intentions where we don't have to go to the war. We could, if our government would use alternative fuels, reduce consumption, be conservation minded. We wouldn't need to be in this war.

Robert Klein: But now, I mean, I gather from the life you're leading now that what you did in the Peace Corps, there's lots to do here within the United States. So your involvement with Sierra Club and environmental.

Ellen Shively: Yeah, it's all related.

Robert Klein: It's all of a piece, yeah. Great.

Ellen Shively: And I try not to be too big of a consumer and live pretty simply, try to recycle stuff.

Robert Klein: We are I think.