On August 25, 1961, sixty-two Peace Corps Volunteers graduated from a nine-week training program at Rutgers University and were accepted to serve as community development workers in Colombia. The project was the first Peace Corps program to be administered by a private agency-CARE. After a day-long trip to Washington for State Department briefings and an interview with President Kennedy, we departed from New York on September 7 for South America. After arriving in Bogota, the capital of Colombia, the group went to Tibaitata Experimental Farm some twenty kilometers from the capital. We stayed at this farm, established by the Rockefeller Foundation, for about five weeks.
Tom Mullhis writes: The Peace Corps begins in Colombia - From The Volunteer Newsletter March 1962
COLOMBIA
By Tom Mullhis
On August 25, 1961, sixty-two Peace Corps Volunteers graduated from a nine-week training program at Rutgers University and were accepted to serve as community development workers in Colombia. The project was the first Peace Corps program to be administered by a private agency-CARE. After a day-long trip to Washington for State Department briefings and an interview with President Kennedy, we departed from New York on September 7 for South America. After arriving in Bogota, the capital of Colombia, the group went to Tibaitata Experimental Farm some twenty kilometers from the capital. We stayed at this farm, established by the Rockefeller Foundation, for about five weeks.
While at the farm we attended regular lectures in Spanish by the various departments of government. Colombia's President Lleras came out to offer his gratitude to the Peace Corps and outlined some of the problems we would encounter. These briefings were held to inform us about the situations in which we would be working-water, roads, schools, health. Along with the lectures, the Volunteers took field trips to observe pueblo life and its problems. One such trip was to the small town of Sutatenza where we observed a training school for young Colombians in village work similar to the Peace Corps. The people from the town threw a grand fiesta forthe boys with fireworks and -dancing. Also, while at Tibaitata, the sixty-two Volunteers participated in work sessions in a small community or barrio near Bogota called Los Laches. The boys helped the people to begin their new school by making the cement blocks, digging the foundation and erecting a storage building for curing the blocks. All this done with the people who lived in Los Laches. After five weeks at Tibaitata the work sites were personally selected and approved by President Lleras. The Peace Corps Volunteers were assigned to three groups.
The National Federation of Coffee growers received thirty-eight Volunteers to work in the coffee growing areas of the country. The Cauca Valley Corporation received six boys to help in their work. The remaining twelve were assigned to Accion Comttnetl-a government agency formed to help improve the pueblos in the central regions of Colombia. The Volunteers were placed in nine departments (states) and twenty-nine teams of two each were formed. Each of the four Volunteer leaders deliver supplies to the Volunteers. Each team received a Colombian to work with them so each group was made up of two North Americans and one Colombian.
The projects now under way in each site are very similar. The village people feel that water, roads, schools and general health and sanitation are their most urgent needs. Here is a sample of sites and projects as of January 1962:
Peace Corps Volunteer Charles R. Akin of Minneapolis discusses community improvement ideas with village leaders in Choachi, Colombia, one of the Peace Corps project sites.
1-La Union, Narino. Aqueduct now underway and also two roads and bridges.
2-Minca, Magdalena. Projects now under construction: aqueduct, road, park, public health center, school, electrification program. .
3-Tunia, Cauca.. Building private home -for _widow~and six children, building latrines, sports facilities,school.
4-Candelaria, Valle. Sports facilites, pure water, soccer field, electrification program, class in simple wiring, English class, road. There have been a couple of side projects completed thus far. One Volunteer has designed some prefabricated furniture and another has built a bamboo-weaving machine for making mats for construction.
Regional meetings-at which the Volunteers compare and discuss their mutual problems-are held every three or four months in the four regional sites where the leaders are located.
The reception of the Peace Corps in Colombia has been very good. Few, if any incidents have diminished the Colombian peoples' enthusiasm in workng with the Volunteers in the small villages.
What's a day like for the Peace Corpsman in Colombia? Arising at six in the morning, George Kroon of Wallingford, Pennsylvania, washes and shaves in cold water getting ready for another day in Fuquene, Cundi-namarca. Breakfast at a local cantina usually consists of a couple of fried eggs, some fried meat, fruit juice, bread and, of course, hot Colombian coffee. Out for a tour of his work area, George travels by horse with his Colombian promotor Morales. They inspect the sites of two schools being constructed and also the new aqueduct. Back in the village they have a lunch of hot soup, meat, potatoes, rice, fruit and coffee. Tn the afternoon, George and his partner work in the town plaza with the people who live in Fuqucnc and surrounding areas. They spend their time making cement blocks for the new public health center that is being built with funds raised recently at a fiesta. Everyone from the mayor to the smallest kids arc helping out in the building. At the day's end, George goes to a farmer's house (or supper. Hot soup again starts the meal, followed by meat, potatoes, rice, beets or onions, bread and t'mto-a small cup of coffee. After a bit of singing and learning a Colombian dance or two, George returns to his living quarters. He lives in a small building with one room for sleeping, smother for an office and there is a bathroom with running water. After making a few notes of the day's happenings, George has time for a letter to his folks. The electricity is made available by a generator that operates from dark to about ten p.m. If George wants to read after the generator stops, he lights a lantern in the room.
This is quite typical of many of the Volunteers in Colombia. The work is now beginning to roll along to successful advances in community development. The first few months have been perhaps the most difficult in getting things organized. Almost all the work has been in thought and words, but now these are being reproduced in bridges, schools, roads and public health centers. Colombia has a great future. So does the Peace Corps in Colombia!
