My life in Emanuel County prepared me well for this international adventure. Not only did my 4-H Club work become valuable to me, my schooling in languages also helped. Willie Womack Turner taught me two years of Latin and two years of French. When I started Peace Corps language training I felt that I would soon fall out of the program as I sat beside graduates from Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton. The time was 7 A.M. The place was a classroom at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. The Swahili teacher was a native speaker. Each week we were assigned new groups and eventually I realized that I had moved into the top language group. A gift for learning a language is not necessarily an Ivy League degree. While most of my Peace Corps colleagues were out in the bush on muddy roads, I wore my Delores and Woody clothes, coat and tie to the office every day. I had good office skills, dressed the part and could speak the language. Did I do anything to improve Kenyan agriculture? Yes, but it is impossible to measure. Why do the developing nations still need so much money? Locusts come from all directions. I am not giving up on growing zinnias, nor am I giving up on a world which can feed itself. My current distress and despair about growing a few flowers in Garfield must not overwhelm my youthful enthusiasm for helping the world.
Jack Atkinson writes: I was lucky to be posted to an administrative position in Nairobi working with the nation's rural youth program similar to our 4-H Clubs
Youthful confidence eroded
by JACK ATKINSON
Published: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 5:04 PM EDT
The key goal from the G-8 world leader's conference in Italy was to deliver 20 billion dollars to improve agricultural production in the developing world. This gave me a jolt from my current problem with grasshoppers eating my zinnia seedlings to my youthful days in Africa when I was determined to save the world.
Three times this season I have planted a zinnia called Envy. It is green and makes an interesting grouping with a large purple variety I have also planted. I have one purple one blooming and the grasshoppers got the rest. I do have many "common" zinnias from seeds I had saved from last year. Over forty years ago I was in Kenya working with young people trying to introduce improved seeds. Some of the people were formerly pastoral people who had never grown anything. Others were wedded to their old seeds which they knew would germinate. My experience exactly. The new green Envy zinnias did not come up (or if they did the grasshoppers liked them a lot) and the old fashioned seeds did. It takes more than 20 billion dollars to get new seeds planted which may increase production; it takes persuasion, trust and a great leap of faith.
The memory of my early life in changing the world led me to look at agriculture in Kenya today. I found an interesting article on MTT (maize transplanting technology).
Who knows, this may be my zinnia solution: grow them in containers away from hungry grasshoppers and then transplant them when they are able to fend for themselves against the bugs. We never know what technology, seed or practice will revolutionize agriculture and make us food sufficient for the entire world. In Kenya they are trying what the Chinese found to work in their dry areas.
Earl Varner and J.T.Bailey were responsible for my agricultural expertise which got me into an agricultural program in the Peace Corps. Record books from 4-H Club work gave evidence that I could save human kind. With my degree from Emory in sociology, I was lucky to be posted to an administrative position in Nairobi working with the nation's rural youth program similar to our 4-H Clubs. For two years I traveled the entire country to look at young people's cabbage plots and other projects. It was the most rewarding time of my life.
My life in Emanuel County prepared me well for this international adventure. Not only did my 4-H Club work become valuable to me, my schooling in languages also helped. Willie Womack Turner taught me two years of Latin and two years of French. When I started Peace Corps language training I felt that I would soon fall out of the program as I sat beside graduates from Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton. The time was 7 A.M. The place was a classroom at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. The Swahili teacher was a native speaker. Each week we were assigned new groups and eventually I realized that I had moved into the top language group. A gift for learning a language is not necessarily an Ivy League degree.
While most of my Peace Corps colleagues were out in the bush on muddy roads, I wore my Delores and Woody clothes, coat and tie to the office every day. I had good office skills, dressed the part and could speak the language. Did I do anything to improve Kenyan agriculture? Yes, but it is impossible to measure. Why do the developing nations still need so much money? Locusts come from all directions.
I am not giving up on growing zinnias, nor am I giving up on a world which can feed itself. My current distress and despair about growing a few flowers in Garfield must not overwhelm my youthful enthusiasm for helping the world.
Jack Atkinson can be reached at jpatkinson@pineland.net.
