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The Foul-Ups. They have also been the victims of inexcusable administrative foulups. A batch of young nurses was sent to a medical aid station in Bolivia only to find that the place was to be closed down shortly after they arrived. Mrs. Frances Cunha, 74, a California walnut-farm owner, was sent to the dust bowl near the Sáo Francisco river valley in Brazil to help nurture the cashew and Brazil-nut trees. She quickly discovered that nut trees had never been grown there. Again, a group of volunteers was posted to a scruffy village in Nepal, found that no one knew they were coming, who they were or what they were supposed to do. They spent the night huddled grimly beneath flimsy blankets in a bare, cold house, finally broke up in laughter when a voice piped up, "Any more bright ideas, Mr. Kennedy?"
The corps' largest program is in the Philippine Islands, where there are 600 "teachers' aides." It has also been one of the least satisfying—at least to the volunteers. Most of them are young liberal-arts college graduates without teaching experience. They were sent in to help out Filipino teachers in village classrooms, and no one knew exactly what they were supposed to do when they got there. Some took over classes almost entirely; others stood around to help out with an English translation now and then. Generally, the Philippines volunteers can see no real progress. Says one corpsman: "We read about a volunteer in South America who has made 3,000,000 bricks or built a bridge, and we feel discouraged. We ask: 'What have we done?' "
"Dumb, Not Deliberate." In Colombia, Peace Corps Representative Christopher Sheldon insists that the program there is the "most successful in Latin America." There are 210 volunteers in Colombia, and most of them have been working with a government-sponsored program called "Action Comunal" (community action) to help peasants shape up their towns. Sheldon makes an impressive count of what they have created: 88 health centers, 442 schools, 82 bridges, 102 aqueducts, and 425 kilometers of roads.
But not all of the corpsmen agree with that assessment of progress. Many of them charged into Colombia 21 months ago, full of enthusiasm, and ran full tilt into a stone wall of local government inertia. Michael Wilson, 26, of Hinsdale, 111., says he waited two months for the Colombian Public Works Ministry to lend him a bulldozer for one day to grade a road. But the day it arrived was a national holiday, and the whole town was drunk. "It wasn't deliberate. Just dumb, man," says Wilson. And Bruce Lane, 25, of Austin, Texas, was totally soured by his experiences: "I came here two years ago with the attitude of a social worker who was going to help the country's peasants. Now I feel to hell with 'em."