Carl J. Lace says: In Mali, there was an American Peace Corps volunteer already in place when I arrived to find a village of cannibals



"I asked her who they eat and she said 'strangers.'" Lace didn't think he would live through the night, but he did, and the next day the villagers gave him a necklace that contained the bones of the last person killed _ a sign of trust. He recalled a big pot where the villagers would mix together all kinds of food. Sometimes there was human flesh, other times food they grew such as rice and beans. "They had no meat," he said. While there were cows everywhere, they are sacred and were not to be eaten. They occasionally got meat in the form of a nearby villager who died or from a stranger. "I did eat from that pot, and you would have too if you had been in the same situation," he said. "I had to eat what they had to eat."

PCOL Comment: There is no cannibalism in Mali.

Carl J. Lace says: In Mali, there was an American Peace Corps volunteer already in place when I arrived to find a village of cannibals

81-year-old Peace Corps volunteer reflects on service

By LEANN ASKINS

Sunday, February 11, 2007 12:38 PM CST

Caption: Mother and Child in Mali. Photo: Ferdinand Reus Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0

CHERRY VALLEY, Ark. - Recalling exotic locales from the Caribbean to Africa, Carl J. Lace looked back on his life as he celebrated his 81st birthday recently.

Besides a stint in the military and volunteering for the Peace Corps, Lace has spent most of his life in Cherry Valley.

He admits that it's a simple life, these days filled with drop-in visits from friends and catching up on what is going on in the small Cross County town. For Lace, it was the time away volunteering and serving his country that made his life exciting.

He was looking for an adventure after retiring from farming, and the Peace Corps offered just that.

"It was some of the happiest part of my life," he remembered.

Lace spent time in a number of countries including the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Turks and Caicos Islands, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Mexico, Mali, West Africa and Lesotho, South Africa.

He volunteered off and on for 15 years.

Public service wasn't new for the former school board member, but joining the Peace Corps was a totally different experience. He recalled several situations _ some new and some strange _ he found himself in during that time.

In Mali, West Africa, there was an American Peace Corps volunteer already in place when he arrived to find a village of cannibals.

"I asked her who they eat and she said 'strangers.'"

Lace didn't think he would live through the night, but he did, and the next day the villagers gave him a necklace that contained the bones of the last person killed _ a sign of trust.

He recalled a big pot where the villagers would mix together all kinds of food. Sometimes there was human flesh, other times food they grew such as rice and beans.

"They had no meat," he said. While there were cows everywhere, they are sacred and were not to be eaten. They occasionally got meat in the form of a nearby villager who died or from a stranger.

"I did eat from that pot, and you would have too if you had been in the same situation," he said. "I had to eat what they had to eat."

He was there for two years, but said he wasn't really scared after that first day.

"I had the whole village protecting me," he said.

As in other areas, he taught them how to more effectively raise crops. Lace used all of his years of farming experience to help with crops in a number of countries. In Costa Rica, he helped select a site for a rice pump. In the Turk and Caicos islands, he introduced orange trees.

"There are about 2,000 orange trees there now that weren't there before."

In Mexico, he was attached to a boy's orphanage to help them grow food.

He also introduced coconuts and bees to some areas. He helped with a lot of rice projects.

During his time abroad, Lace said he found one of the biggest problems in some areas was that many people just didn't want to work. The ones who had eaten cabbage all of their lives were content to continue to do so.

"What thrilled me was the kids," he recalled. "I could be gone for two years and go back to the same remote village and they would remember me."

Lace recalled a time in the Dominican Republic where he helped 60 men who each had two acres of land with patches of rice. Their technology wasn't advanced; they still farmed with machetes. He helped get them fertilizers and other things. Really, he said, the goal was just to teach them small things to help make their lives better.

Lace said it was difficult at first to determine which man owned what land because they slept in different houses each night. He found it interesting that in some areas he visited, some men had five wives.

There was one instance where he saw one man who had a woman who fanned him all day, one pumped water all day, another washed his feet so he could go to the mosque and pray several times a day.

Some of the most interesting things he saw during his travels were in Haiti. He recalled one night traveling with a friend in search of a voodoo doll. After going across a river to get the doll, he watched the locals eat live chickens. Lace got his doll, and has kept it to this day. He said that six weeks after he got back with the doll, he had to have major surgery. And he wonders if voodoo had anything to do with it.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)

Links to Related Topics (Tags):

Headlines: February, 2007; Peace Corps Mali; Directory of Mali RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Mali RPCVs; Older Volunteers; Humor; Humor

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