Confrontation [1967]

But the kind of colonialism Conrad describes, is a thing of the past. Its ghost still haunts the Africa of today. And remains one of the largest obstacles in the difficult struggle that now engages all of Africa. It is still an immense and exciting land. Troubled by the problems that accompany its greatest challenge. The attempt to overcome the past and achieve the present.

This village, [? Iki, ?] Ivory Coast, French-speaking West Africa. This old woman, this little boy, these children, are all, whether they know it or not, a part of the 20th century. To assist the people of Africa in their work to achieve a place in the modern world, the Peace Corps, at the request of African leaders, has sent its volunteers to teach in secondary schools in the Ivory Coast, Togo, Senegal, and Gabon. These volunteers have made a commitment, entailing possibly the greatest challenge of their lives, to improve the human condition in areas where human life itself has seemed miracle enough.

Confronted for the first time with the fact of Africa, these volunteers begin to experience the familiar phenomenon of cultural shock. Nick Fuller has spent the last four years at Harvard and finds that the Ivy League is a long way from the Ivory Coast. Stephen Flance, zealous and impatient. Encounters the first of many small frustrations he will have to learn to endure. A train that will take 12 hours to travel 200 miles. The comforts and conveniences that Marie Murphy and Don Robinson have always taken for granted, are luxuries in much of modern Africa. For Vicky Clarr and the rest of her companions, the most difficult experience is relearning the obvious fact about this continent, as white men, they represent the minority. In Africa, everyone is black.

The volunteers begin to experience some of the things that separates Africa from the United States. A riot of sound and color. Food that will eventually make them ill. And most of all, the people. [CROWD NOISE] [TRAIN BELL]

Given the problems they face, and the nature of their commitment, what will the success or failure of these volunteers mean? And with what standards can it be measured? How do they regard the two years that lie ahead? As Vicky Clarr admits, they are at first uneasy, even afraid. [TRAIN NOISE]

Their introduction to Africa, the first leg of their long journey, took place here over a year ago. On the campus of Dartmouth college, in Hanover, New Hampshire. In an effort demonstrating the increasing involvement of the academic world with a world of action, Dartmouth sponsors several training programs for the Peace Corps. Designed to bridge the physical, cultural, and psychological gulf between America and Africa. In this one, which goes furthest in its intensity, the trainees begin to familiarize themselves with a land that will be their home a year from now. Here at Dartmouth, the classes and seminars begin. The trainees learn French and the African languages in which they will communicate when they get to Africa. They're extensively grounded in African affairs, history, economics, and politics.

Their training and orientation are not limited to the classroom. It extends to extracurricular skills like well digging, through the spectrum of African life from fashion shows to informal parties with African instructors and staff members. Although Africa is still remote, the trainees begin to know Africans not as abstractions, but as individuals, as persons like themselves. With this knowledge, their commitment begins also to be translated into action. Their ability to respond to individual Africans prepares them for their response to Africa itself.

In a climax to their stay at Dartmouth, the trainees find their commitment rather sternly tested. They join with return volunteers, staff members, and Africans in a picnic. Gathering firewood, each killing a chicken, which he must pluck, cook, and perhaps most difficult, eat. All as Africans do.

After a year at their respective colleges and universities, the trainees resume their journey, this time in Quebec, at the College de Saint-Anne de la Pocatiere. French Canada, where two centuries and two cultures still seem to conflict, provides a foreign, French-speaking environment in which the trainees can improve their language skills, practice teaching, and develop their capacity to discern and respond to particular problems. It is in many ways, an ideal way station between America and Africa. The volunteers are officially welcomed by the Roman Catholic hierarchy, whose cooperation and assistance are essential to whatever success they hope to achieve. No sooner have they made themselves comfortable when the work begins anew. Intensive instruction in French and the African languages, taught by native Frenchmen and Africans.

[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGES]

The trainees also continue to acquire the skills they need to live and work in Africa. For some, who have never grown anything larger or more important than a petunia, gardening, though perhaps difficult at first, may be essential.

They attempt some rudimentary, but vigorous soccer. Africa's most popular sport. Another way of getting accustomed to things African.

One of the greatest steps toward the continent that has become increasingly more visible in their lives, is their opportunity to practice what they have been learning. Sent out to small Canadian villages, the trainees must establish and structure their own teaching programs. Given the chance to accomplish the task she will be assigned in Africa, Vicky Clarr discovers a new competence within herself.

VICKY CLARR: Yesterday. Good. Ask her if she ate dinner last night.

NARRATOR: Steve Flance, weary of being a student himself, finds renewed pleasure in working with his own students.

STEVE FLANCE: Do you need an envelope?

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

NARRATOR: Marie Murphy channels her natural gregariousness into one of the teacher's most necessary functions. Making her students enjoy learning.

MARIE MURPHY: Yes, we'll stay.

STUDENT 1: Yes, we'll stay.

MARIE MURPHY: Will we stay? Yes, we'll stay.

STUDENT 1: Will we stay? Yes, we'll stay.

MARIE MURPHY: Yes, we'll stay.

STUDENT 1: Yes, we'll stay.

STUDENT 2: Will we stay? Yes, we'll stay.

STUDENT 3: Will we stay? Yes, we'll stay.

NARRATOR: Like Nick Fuller, they all feel an enormous increase in confidence and satisfaction at doing the job they have been prepared for. And like Sue [? Hellier, ?] they begin to realize the teacher's unique power to touch the minds and hearts of young people.

The other half of their life in these villages, ranks equally in importance with their teaching. Again, acting solely on their own, they live and work with Canadian families. Communicating entirely in a foreign language. Accepting different customs and points of view. Exercising the vital faculty of being fully themselves in an unfamiliar world. As they practice their new skills, their awareness and sensitivity, their readiness for Africa, is heightened. The years ahead loom larger and anticipation intensifies.

Some find themselves inadequate to what lies before them and leave the program. Before they embark for Africa, others will drop out. But those who remain, made their commitment. They will go to a new land and a new people. To face the old problem of reaching other human beings. [SINGING]

Toward the end of their stay in Canada, the trainees assemble with the staff for a picnic at the program director's chalet on the Saint Lawrence. Having experienced something of Africa in America, they now introduce America to Africa. In the territory of still another country, superficial barriers disappear in the internationalism of the Peace Corps and in the conviviality of the moment. No longer separate or distinguishable as Africans, Frenchmen, or Americans. As speakers of English, or French, or Fon or Wolof. They're only people. Sharing something of themselves. Finding in each other a common meeting ground. No longer is Africa remote. [SINGING AND CHANTING] [DRUMS PLAYING]

After their arrival in Africa, for continuation of training, the first sights they encounter are part of any tourist's Africa. Exciting and different. New and delightful to any traveler to a country with a distinct and colorful heritage. [SINGING]

What differentiates the Peace Corps volunteer from the tourist, is his ability to penetrate and respond to depths which the ordinary outsider might never suspect. They are all aware of the problems that await them. The startlingly, shocking contrast to a country caught between its past and its future. Striving for a place in this century.

The blanket that Steve Flance examines in the market was woven by the slow and tedious method, which cannot compete for long against the industrial expansion of the 20th century. This stately mosque rises impressively above slums with open sewers running through them. Slums demonstrating Africa's manifold problems. Modern, urban symptoms attacking a country that is still trying to throw off the diseases of the past.

A movie theater with American pictures in the city where children pick through garbage for food. A market where everything is on sale. From colorful fabrics and jewelry, to magic charms and unsanitary food. Where the tourist may see only the picturesque surface, the volunteer recognizes the sometimes unspeakable reality beneath. That is his job. The task he has been trained to do. They have also been trained to adjust. To try to improve their situation and that of the people around them. They set up an infirmary. Many are ill. With dysentery, with malaria. Afflicted by the physical and psychological reaction of undergoing a rapid change in space, time, and culture. They have caught Africa. Come down with an illness resulting from seeing too many problems in too short a time.

Because they are energetic and committed to a task, because they believe in the necessity of action, of doing something, anything. They try with inadequate tools, and rather mixed cooperation, to trim trees and cut grass. Finding in physical labor, a reminder of their mission. Although they have the understandable desire to see a concrete result, to accomplish immeasurable task, they are here for another reason. To teach, as well as to do.

Education remains the most vital need of Africa. And probably the most important service the Peace Corps can provide. Africa's future lies in its young people, who will determine the course their countries will follow. In some African countries, Peace Corps volunteers comprise fully one half of all secondary school teachers. They cannot avoid affecting the future of this continent.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

NARRATOR: And so they teach Africans. Each of them accomplishing the job he was trained for. Using the skills acquired and developed at Dartmouth and in Canada. Here in the classroom, they begin to see the results of their practice and their training. Competent as teachers, confident as individuals, Steve Flance, Vicky Clarr, Nick Fuller, Don Robinson, Marie Murphy, are full-fledged instructors. Confronting young Africa face-to-face.

With a rare opportunity to bend their minds in the service of a dream, they also have the chance to affect the destiny of a people. Dependent on themselves, on their capacity, matured through training, to transmit knowledge and respond to others. They're fulfilling the commitment they made a year ago and many miles from this place. The Peace Corps volunteer, neither soldier, tourist, propaganda weapon, or diplomat. Though he may occasionally seem a combination of all of these, is, in Steve Flance's words, a professional person. An individual who has acquired a number of skills, has developed his knowledge of certain concrete things, and has heightened his ability to respond and adapt to a variety of human situations.

He may sometimes look like a tourist. As when he visits places like this village. But his sensitivity to others and his awareness of his role bring him closer to the people and their problems than any tourist ever penetrates. Those who come to Africa expecting to change it radically, may have to defer their [INAUDIBLE]. Tangible achievements have a way of melting before the onslaught of burgeoning difficulties. These volunteers may accomplish something to help Africans transcend the painful past and the even more agonizing present. On the other hand, they made not. It will take that slow passage of time and event we call history, to judge the efficacy of their endeavor. If indeed it can be measured at all. But to deny the worth of their undertaking, is to be contemptuous of history itself.

The very fact that they have made the long journey from their homes to this place, that they have ripened gradually from immaturity to competence as teachers and as individuals. That they have taken the step from vision to action, is itself, a kind of success. They're doing something they feel needs doing, is worth doing.

The key to their work is confrontation. They will not radically change Africa. But they will affect the lives of many people in a direct and personal way. In the final analysis, what they do here depends on what they can be as individuals. Not as members of an organization. Their confrontation with Africa cannot be tallied in an account or listed in a survey of achievements. Cannot be seen or used like a latrine or a highway. It consists, rather, of recognizing human potential. Of communicating directly with others. Once the Peace Corps volunteer, the professional person, reaches out to another human being, he accomplishes a vital part of the job he came to do. Everything else follows from this essential fact. And without it, he cannot in any way succeed. These Peace Corps volunteers, Steve Flance, Marie Murphy, Vicky Clarr, and others like them, are communicating. And have taken the vital first step in their task in Africa, and the vital last step of their journey toward Africa. This is their confrontation. [DRUMS PLAYING]