Quite often the CVSF requested volunteers for projects not slated to begin until long after the corpsmen's arrival date. In Lapa, geologists Chase and Onstad are still waiting for a long-promised well-drilling operation which is slowly working its way south from Joazeiro. Any irrigation work that Howard Hunt might have done in Lapa could only follow the installation of electricity--which occurred in July, eight months after Hunt arrived.

Experts?

The Brazilians involved say there is another side to the story. The Peace Corps volunteers turned out to be a lot less "experts" than their hosts expected. When the Brazilians asked for agronomists, mechanics, geologists, they were thinking of the highly-trained technicians sent by the Point Four aid program which preceded the Alliance for Progress by a decade. Instead the Corps sent young (average age: 23) unprofessionals whose reference cards listed summer jobs growing up on a farm, a college major, or 4-H work. The volunteer from Memphis, Tenn., who as a high school student had tuned up cars in a downtown garage walked into a mechanic shop in Bahia and was helpless. Another corpsman was selected for geology, but by the time he arrived at his station, he had lost interest in the field.

It wasn't just a case of misunderstanding between the contracting parties. The problem stemmed equally from a mistaken notion that is heard all too often in the Peace Corps--namely, that good old American roll-up-the-sleeves know-how is adequate for the underdeveloped world That formula hasn't worked in Brazil. Two geologists and one radio mechanic were unemployed this summer because they were no use at their jobs. Here were cases where the CVSF had come through on good jobs that were too specialized for the Americans. At least as many Peace Corpsmen in Brazil were out of work because of inexperience as because of negligence on the part of the CVSF.

Americans aren't the only ones with faith in U.S. know-how, Brazilians who joined the U.S. officials in preparing the Peace Corps project agreed that it didn't matter much that the volunteers had no professional training. Dr. Jose Pacheco Pimenta, head of the CVSF, travelled to Oklahoma University to encourage the volunteers in training. When one girl told him she didn't have enough experience to set up hospital labs in Brazil, he shrugged and said, "Come anyhow, you can learn." She said Pimenta seemed convinced that "Americans can do anything."

'Casual Training'

The Peace Corps administration was also guilty of careless selection and a casual training program. Every volunteer is selected in a "practical" field--based on a very general aptitude test, outside recomendations, and the volunteer's past experience. Volunteer Jim Murray tried to convince the Peace Corps all through training that he was not a radio man despite what the IBM machine said. On his application he had listed his brief experience at a radio operator the Army. He says he knows enough about radios to turn them on and off. When he protested his placement to a Peace Corps official, the official told Murray to "keep going, we'll find something for you to do in Brazil."

Training at Oklahoma, and later at Muscle Shoals, had a tinge of the absurd. Still classified as a radio mechanic, Murray was confronted with some TVA electrical machinery and told to work on it for practice. "It was ridiculous--I grabbed my Portugese book and took off," said Murray. Of a similar cursory nature was the training for the geologists. They got to look at one well-rig in operation. But it was hands off, according to Chase.

Psychological Borderline

Even the selection committee at Oklahoma seemed in a hurry to get everyone packed off to Brazil. Several volunteers were very surprised when a number of obvious "psychological borderline cases" were left in the final group at the end of training. Several volunteers told me about the case of the girl who had the habit of sleeping around. According to one source, "If the psychiatrists on the selection committee didn't know about this girl, they were the only ones." Three months after arriving in her duty station, the girl was involved in a sex scandal that became more widely known than all other volunteer work in Brazil. Most of those "borderline cases" are now back in the States, the informant said.

Thus there are many facts to support the Brazilian charge that the Peace Corps was sloppy in the selection and training of its volunteers. In Washington the defense is that it is a deliberate policy of the corps to choose all-around, adaptable types instead of specialists. If that is so, then the Peace Corps' fundamental error was in signing the contract with the CVSF. The CVSF expected experts and did not get many. The few specialists who came to Brazil were let down by the CVSF. The Peace Corps stood to lose every way, and did. Because they were promised jobs in their "field," the corpsmen were unprepared to find other work. Instead of looking around for other opportunities, they stayed home and cursed the organization that sent them, Said Judy Draper, 23, a sology major from the U. of Tennessee who found no lab work in Lapa: "When my job fall through, I felt the Corps had betrayed me, I didn't feel much like looking for other work."

Find Jobs

But Judy Draper and her compatriots who stuck it out with the Brazil project have finally found work. They did so by digging in at the grass roots--by befriending the townspeople. In Lapa, for example, every Peace Corps project has grown out of interchange with the villagers. Mrs. Frances Cunha, 74, the oldest women in the Corps, started a day nursery and sewing class at the insistence of the local padre. Jim Murray was invited to teach English and geography in two Lapa schools. On the outskirts of the town, three corpsmen are building low-income houses in a cooperative venture that includes six Lapa workers. Jury Draper provides medical supplies and teaches sewing and hygiene to the wives of the six workers.

Only 15 per cent of the Brazil volunteers are still working with the CVSF. The rest are engaged in independent projects like those in Lapa. This is ushering in sweeping changes in Peace Corps policy.

Close to Villagers