In the Spirit of Cooperation

Casey TACL program title in the spirit of cooperation. Producer Jean Walkinshaw this is a stereo mix track 1 is the let's you know track to the right you know track through drop frame time code. Oh. And. Major funding for this program was provided by the Hosa bank of NDH and additional funding was provided by Dolores and Floyd Jones. Oh and I am. Gun in Western Africa. A developing country where Japanese

Americans and Canadians share friendships and technical knowledge and in turn learn from villagers not to lose hope in the face of difficulties. Guyana a country where volunteers from two industrialized Giants Japan and the United States meet local people in a land where the average annual income is three hundred ninety dollars. I decided to join the Peace Corps because I want to help people help themselves. I'm a member of an overseas corporation because I want to broaden my view. I would like to get close to the locals. I definitely get a lot more out of it than anything I guess. Few realize that since 1965 the Japanese have had their own organization

based on the American Peace Corps. And often the volunteers work side by side with Americans abroad. Here then is what it's like for American and Japanese volunteers in this struggling and colorful country Garner. Thing you're right. Good good. Scattered along Gunness Coast formerly known as the Gold Coast are 15th and 16th century Fords built by the British Portuguese Dutch and Danes all the remnants of Donna's past when up to 10000 slaves a year were chained and kept waiting in wet dungeons to be shipped to the new world. In the shadow of the ford of oxy and so consequently e.g. an industrial arts expert

and American volunteer Nick lime or a carpenter to cooperate with villagers to develop small business enterprises. And it can cost our neighbors have been neutrally supportive for the past two years. So if you're still here you know and I wanted to help the people develop their society and that's why I joined the cooperation more on this. So I think that. One way Casa found to help was by sharing his knowledge of how to repair outboard motors. And I've seen fishermen used outboard motors but often had no one to repair them. So cars appeal to young men eager to learn. And they opened a repair business right beside the beach. The students worked for free and they worked very hard. They made money with you and with that money you could build your own plant. We worked on Saturdays and Sundays throughout it and we finally got it made a profit. We had capital in our

hands and we could pay the loan and we were very happy with it. Since then CASA has conducted workshops in other villages and before he leaves he's determined to get all the repair shops are running on their own and with solid management. I teach them how to manage their technique is enough for ingenuity. But they don't have an audience of management. In this country to put it he called the GM is militaristic when those people are called Big men who have political power that studies and you cannot make yourself understood if you are 100 percent rational. However one good thing about Ghana unlike the Japanese society where if you want to get something done. There are so many people involved in making decisions. But in this country the society is so fixed you can't have anything done. But despite the freedom from Japanese societal restrictions it wasn't always easy for a

car say. In Japan. When we do something we talk and make a promise and do that. But in Ghana we can't do that. We have to understand their way of thinking. What do they want. What do they want. Sometimes their mind and their what is different. So it's a difference and difficult for us. So sometimes I used to be angry. But now I can understand what they want. So now there is not such a big problem. Some people in NJ OCV tell me that they couldn't find jobs when they did time and they couldn't. Yet I am sad it's for use what they learned about. In the past as I experienced a lot. But I don't know if it would amount to very much when I do time to the Japanese society.

I certainly hope I can utilize my overseas experience. The Japanese volunteer who works on the outboard motor repairs and I live right next door to each other. When I first got here he had been here a year already so I got here in the middle and I arrived his draft came with a lantern and you know how big my house set up a little bit. We worked together on some things with with a motor for that because he's an outboard motor repair and he knows how to work on motorcycles and have motorcycle runs by SA kaso has helped Nick with some real Rube Goldberg type of contraptions for the carpentry equipment used by NEC students. The saw had been sitting in the rain for about six years. They cleaned it up and with constant help they attached an abandoned motorcycle which drives the saw. And this piece of equipment from the bamboo processing machine.

And I added some bicycle parts and it will work and. A lot of stuff. I see a problem I can think of an idea to build something to fix that problem. And that's the whole point of coming here. Here in NC I'm running this car for the school. But it's also a small business. Currently we don't getting outside funding get tools are donated and a facility were donated by the town. But any operating money has to be generated by the school. I bet a couple students said you know that they come in I said given the would a little guidance and then they design and build thing on their own. It would be really exciting. It's something that's special or something nobody else in town is ever done. And any money they make that's from the south so they can build up some capital that way. You sell that one to.

Where you keep this one group of people and you keep. It. I feel I'm making a big difference on the few students that I have. If I make just one small impact on one person that's makes it worthwhile because it's not just my impact on that person it's gone it's impact on me. My major problem that I have here is getting transport for my materials in and out and I usually have to. Beg for a truck from some government official and use of the N to take two or three weeks I have to bribe somebody and take India the real thing or truck it spoiled. Yeah it was in and we had an accident and an accident happened. Some small boys were driving and drinking and head on back. I'm from the Midwest and it's real hot here and I don't think people trucking through snow back

home and I'm sitting on the beach under coconut trees like this is great but this is the Peace Corps. Approximately 10 percent of the American Peace Corps. Volunteers I'm gonna extend their two year terms to three years and this is true of many jails C.V. volunteers as well. CASA has definitely decided to stay another year as he is determined that the motor boat repair business he started will be well managed and will survive once he leaves. Nick on the other hand has not yet decided whether to extend for another year. English speaking Guyana was the first country to receive a Peace Corps recruit in one thousand sixty one and certainly volunteers have helped improve circumstances for many Canadians. But just as important is the impact of the experience on the volunteers themselves. Once home mostly tourney's continue to be actively concerned about world conditions. In the hotel region in the village of effin dignity but there have been previous Peace Corps

recruits but no j o c v volunteers. The new recruit event Nacion from Harlem in New York City has only been in the village for months as a community development worker. Her goal now is to get to know the people learn the local dialect and work with the women in the village to develop a self-help project. It often takes over six months in the village and a lot of patience and initiative before a project is agreed on. Some days it can be rough and I I think my God what am I doing here. Mostly I just spend my time going out reading people talking to people and it may seem like wasting time. But really it's kind of the necessary work that you need to do in the beginning just to kind of get yourself situated into the village and get people comfortable with you and know that you know you're not just another forno who's kind of coming in to make a fast buck and leaving them but you're someone who really cares and wants to help you

through this once they've got your confidence. Then you can start to work on. OK well what problems are there here. Look beyond the surface. What do you all feel are your problems and how can we work together to help you help yourselves. Well when we went. Through our use were going recently did you know. Right now I'm still getting to know them especially the ones who speak English so that I can start talking with them. They're going to soon learn that family members are very hard. And. I think I'm going to learn a lot about myself in this spirit and learn just how much I can tolerate and how much I can change myself to fit the situation because I'm going to make lately different

culture of a different pace very different from New York where everything is you know yesterday and everything and people walk quickly and they speak quickly and everything happens very quickly and everybody's always late and everything is rushed and I stress I'm a data processing trainer. For a data processing. Company. So every day I'm riding the subways to go to work and to come back. I'm sure that's one thing I won't do it. There are probably a number of things that have made me really have to stretch here. Kind of a lack of control. For one thing over my environment not really knowing what I'm doing and I kind of feel like I'm floating out here sometimes not having a lot of the luxuries really that we have at home that we just take for granted like running water like electricity.

If I were to work in say Harlem which is where I was living it would really be a problem for me. I mean I've lived there all my life I have no problem speaking to people I know how to speak to people there. Whereas here there are a lot of unwritten rules and things that you don't know about and a lot of times you don't learn about them until you break them until you offend someone. What are. You going to. Good to be able to take a break from the village take a break from your work and just come to it whether it's on business or just to escape. I've.

I've had a mixed feeling since I've been here. It's different from what I thought. For one thing usually I'm taken as a good man so a lot of times though just treat me like they treat everyone else and usually that doesn't bother me but it bothers me sometimes when I'm with my other friends who usually in most cases are white and they're treated with a kind of. Reverence deference because of this white person or foreigner. And then I'm treated like an alien. For instance during training I went out to a bar with the white man and a man approached me someone that I didn't know and started trying. And it turns out that that man thought I was a prostitute because I was a black woman with the right. At that moment I was sitting with a white man and that was the first time that it happened that that has that been your time since then.

And that's very difficult because it's it's it's like well I've come here I'm trying to to help people here trying to get to know my ancestors of my past. And then you all insult me for my color because I look like you. A lot of the Canadians that I've met in this village don't even know that there are black Americans in the States. And in Cape Coast and along the coast there are all these slave castles and everything. I kind of expected them to know that and I don't know. So so it's like I'm a stranger to them and therefore they're kind of a stranger to me. The. Day starts very early here. The women have to well depending on whether they have a well or not they usually drop of water in advance. And some of them depending on where they live can be a long walk and they have to make more than one trip because there's just so much they can carry. You.

Yes. Going in and are allowed to have as many wives as they can afford. But I think in this village most men have just one wife maybe two. For that matter. The loon are very active here and are always doing some kind of communal labor every week. They get together and are doing something around the village and it's funny when I approach them and try to join in and take place with them to take part with them. At first they're kind of reluctant. Oh no no no you're just you just stand there. But I want them to get to know the know I'm I'm just like you you're just another woman like you I can if you can hold and I should be here hoeing with you. And once I kind of expressed that I

had to go and pick up the whole whatever that is. Then they say oh yes she's OK you know she's not so exalted She's one of us. It's OK. The Peace Corps is finding appropriate an example of inappropriate technology. Is a tractor that was given to the village and from what I hear it works for a little while broke down. Eventually most of the parts are so expensive to replace a Ford to get the parts. So the tractor just kind of sits there and not doing any good. Among us but not very much.

Everybody starts to cheer when one of the women comes over to the dance floor. Here is there an American foreigner come here and picked up our dances. Like really. Humor is a very important part of very integral part of the culture

they were portraying how the demands were 50 to 100 years ago and it's great the way they're able to look at that and find the humor. And yet also teach a little bit of their own history too. They're always kind of surprised really doing it just like. OK. People are very friendly people always really supportive here and really friendly. Even though I can't always talk to them but there I have mostly good days so it's been OK. The Japanese are volunteers in the U.S. the headquarters in Tokyo. Whereas

American volunteers are trained in the host country. Twenty two women out of 78 you know CD or samples sure to go in the fields of health education manufacturing industry forestry Agriculture and Fisheries. Until training. Juncos I think that you and for me cos got at each lived at home with their parents and neither had travelled much before. The Japanese emphasize technical skills that they consider the recruits and Junior experts. The classes aimed to help trainees gain a broader world outlook increase their knowledge of other cultures and to prepare for the change of lifestyle in their host country. But by far the most demanding of the hours and hours of English classes. The students seldom went home. But just before departing for Ghana they had one final

meeting with their parents. From a dental technician lived in a village near Nagano and her mother and father were very apprehensive about her travelling so far away. For those who are different from us. When I told them I was going first they were speech was of course they were concerned about my help Africa. The image that country conveys its very negative to them. Life with that supply for sedentary conditions a lots of illnesses and diseases. The negatives are all they could think about. And this point she became a concern for them because I mean and my father said it's so far away. Are you really going there. But. They say. If we decided. To join.

We must. We must do our best until the end. In central gun a mansion home of the famous Ashanti gold and leaving our descendants is the village of Tatar from. Here. For me it was assigned as a health technician. Both the geo CV and the Peace Corps the bin in the village for four years working with the tribal chief and his elders and the committees to create better health and prosperity for the village. For me and the Peace Corps recruit Pam Shively who is a community development cards here were part of the welcoming. First the volunteers shook hands around the circle.

And then the villagers shook hands with him. The Palm line was passed around and everyone drank from a communal good. Welcoming speeches were getting up. And this was all topped with a round of home. John. Everyone took a sip and tossed the remains on the ground to honor the earth. If you're a lively and welcoming way to start the morning. As with all Geo CV and Peace Corps projects the volunteers have worked successfully with the existing village and tribal organizations to bring a number of projects to tetra food.

As with so many African villagers Tetra who has been plagued by water nutritional food shortages. The forestation. Poor health. Diseases lack of appropriate technical equipment and skills. And 60 percent illiteracy. In 1057 severing its ties with Great Britain Guyana became the first colony in black Africa to achieve independence. In the early 1980s than it was on the brink of economic collapse. An economic recovery program was initiated which de-centralized his government and strengthens the village organizations. The Ghanaians hope to advance technologically and economically without compromising their own national culture. Supporting the new economic policy of the government. The previous peace corps community development volunteers in tetra who helped to start a sewing machine business to make simple dresses to be sold in

surrounding villages. A carpentry shop for furniture. A poultry farm for better nutrition for everyone and adjacent water catchment cistern for drought periods. Numerous masonry training and construction projects which have resulted in a health care clinic and new housing for the volunteers among other buildings and perhaps the most important a reforestation project. You see all these trees all around me. The plantation we have about planted in town. I know about 2500 species like Kos and that plan and Peace Corps with a strong community to support. The genius he also has received strong community support for the past four years and to

this you know everything in focus has been on health care such as this baby clinic. I was out the way sides are left out. I always thought. That the cultural characteristics of the people of God is the way to intermix the religious songs and business plan extract for the song. You know we don't want that. We get children younger than 5 years old and weigh them. They're very prone to getting the letter Yeah and diarrhea. But you have to work with them by step improvement gradual improvement. And I

try to tell them what they should be doing. And I did my death and other health work at the clinic translates and tell the mothers what kind of food is best with the baby and how they should prepare it to give to them. Twice a month the first day we were pregnant and connect the heartbeat of the baby and we examine the general condition of the body. After an examination for me and many women and I give you instructions on how to improve the condition. Somebody once told me there would be no if you're stupid and interested. But I'm still young and inexperienced and for their reason I decided otherwise it would be hopeless. So I have been doing my best to try to be a positive one.

To conceal and hide their emotions and feelings and I think introverted people and I also think that these women do not know what the deep insight they have and that's what I think. Participated in this documentary. Even though she had suffered from just two days before this video taping. She was very sick and had vomited and diarrhea and high fever. So I was very I was very concerned. I'm not a nurse I don't know much about medical things and it scares me sometimes if people are sick and petrified because there's not a lot available here and there's no there's two motorcycles in town and that's it. And if if she were to get very serious It worries me. I feel relieved when I see you're feeling better when she's sick I do.

I am very concerned. I saw it about my funny or Egypt has been seeing many times but I don't want to go back to Dubai. For me Cohen Pam a become close friends. They live next door to one another. They confide in each other and Pam considers it an extra bonus to learn about Japan. In addition to Guyana. As with the event. Pam's main goal right now is to get to know the community so she accompanies the Canadian health worker and for me go as they go into the village homes to ask questions for a health survey. Your. Ritual would be you know. To me of. Course. Thank. You for calling. There's no water there's no electricity there's nothing here but you could be living a

very orderly life. This is unbelievable. I wouldn't have believed it if I had to stay in Japan. My friends in Japan wouldn't believe that either. They have many brothers and sisters to start with nowadays in Japan. There are families with no children no one to work two three. Here in this country there are seven or eight or even 14 children in each family and the parents cannot be taking care of all the children all the time. The older children normally take care of their younger brothers and sisters. It's very nice. They feed their younger brothers and sisters and they take care of them. And I smile every time I see that. And this trip has been long lost in Japanese society. To think at least women work so hard. I think they work too hard. I'm really amazed and impressed. Man I don't want to speak but I feel very sorry for women because they have to work so hard.

The people who are respected the most are the older people and the older men for their reason don't do very much. As another going to end religious when young women reach maturity the villagers celebrate the puberty ceremony. Many men have proposed and they like me and they want me to marry them. I think they like people better. And I think they think that mixture of white and black is the most beautiful thing in the world. But anyway they love my hair. They want to touch it all the time. And they want to talk to me. There are so many men who are like that. And sometimes it

is uncomfortable. For them in a very gentle man like to me very they ask me about my health all the time. People. Are not like that at all. Everybody asks me. What's bothering you. Are you feeling ill. When I do I feel some kind of despair. I think about Japan often times I think about my family and of my family members backing to. Man. And I've seen this season. There are four distinct. And sometimes I really get. What I want to be and. When I said it to being here I'd use it to stay here two or three years. That.

Very short time compared to my whole life. So I should be hanging on. And I should be doing my best and that's what I tell myself. It's here and. Another time I went up and took a right then. And from far away there was a beautiful her. JUNCO second Gucci an x ray technician lives with her parents in Tokyo.

Both her mother and father are very concerned about juncos prospects for marriage and if she goes to gun to my mother like a friend in my life I do discuss with her. I'm just asking what I think about it and I tell them to tell the person. JUNCO was sent to a rural hospital in a village quite close to Erica's village of Tetra. The Dutch are giving the hospital an X-ray machine but no technician new operator. I'm responsible for maintenance of Jewish. It's a very old model and I have never seen it before. I bought some textbooks from Japan and I studied

about the machine before I could finally use it myself. Come on I get this generally speaking. You do not have any knowledge about its release and you have no concern whatsoever about being really sick that they know about Hiroshima. But they cannot make the connections or associations and the machine I'm using here at the clinic and little by little I would like to let them know by holding study sessions to by having study sessions itself is very difficult because I can't speak English and I can't speak their language so I I make them to be ready if I see something like that they are. It is a bet they had to communicate that he's a good a simple ass. She's been so helpful to. Us. So dynamic to do it's necessary for her to do.

The song sheets will change the dead to new instruments which seems to help us very much. Having come from the Aricept technologically sophisticated environment in Tokyo hospitals Junko has found it hard to adjust to the conditions she finds in this poverty stricken small rural hospital in Guyana. They don't seem to care if the water they drink. This surprises me I heard about these things in Japan but first hand experience is something you have to write. It surprises me. That's right for those of us regard very highly skilled to clean. So rather than myself their health workers should go into the villages and should tell the villagers not to drink certain

kinds of water to avoid getting certain kinds of sicknesses. I think that kind of organization or assistance should be done but that's what you're. After I came here I realized the job I'm doing is important. But these local health workers should be fostered and sent to all the villages. Japanese volunteers receive $200 more a month than do Peace Corps volunteers who receive $150 for living allowances in Guyana like Junko most jails he volunteers come to Guyana at the invitation of the host country to fill a specific technical need. The Peace Corps also at the invitation of the Canadians is turning more toward innovative and creative rural community development. These are usually less define. They often result in acutely needed long lasting projects which are carried on by villagers. Once the volunteer leaves.

She wants to come visit me. I want to see her but you have cholera and other diseases malaria. My parents write to me once a week and I look forward to that. And I write back to them once a week. It's getting there. And when I hear them I get homesick and it's very hot and I live. In this village there's only one person I want to

hear. I want to. Sing the stars and I'm beautiful in my mind blank time I really feel home. But I'm determined to stay here and complete my commitment. At 23 Tracy Smolin is younger than the average Peace Corps volunteer. Since there is no upper age limit many older Americans are now joining. Tracey had recently graduated from college when she came home to Grants Pass Oregon to prepare for her two years in Guyana as a math teacher. My parents have been both very supportive of me. My mother feels really excited for Mrs God I'm taking this opportunity to do what I want. She also is very nervous for me I think she's scared of what I may have to face and expression of the medical problems and the physical hardships I may have to endure. But I think she is.

She's glad that I'm doing what I want to do. She's village of wanting one that is located on earth that is in the north of the harmattan blue sand from the Sahara in the desert moving in from the farmland used to be. Tracy seemed at home in her new surroundings and adapted very quickly to village life and what they want. If I try and get water if I try and wash and a child comes along or student comes along I'll take whatever I'm doing out of my hands and do it for me and say let me help. So at first I was saying no it's ok I can do this. It's ok and they go oh no no let me help you go. OK. I feel like I should be more homesick than I am. And I mean of course I've been

homesick I miss my family and my friends. But to tell you the truth I couldn't imagine being back at home right now. Right. I never thought before I came here. So it's a whole new environment to trying to teach. And I have over 200 students that I teach I teach or to day school so a lot of the kids have to travel maybe five miles in the morning to get here by 6:30. Clean the school grounds before classes classes start at 7:30. Their classes all the way till 2 o'clock and then comb five miles in the heat. It gets really easy to spend the whole day here on the compound and never leave. Which tends to happen sometimes because I teach all day and then students want to come back for extra classes maybe at 4 o'clock and then I teach until 5:30 it gets dark at 6:30 no lights so I read

by lanterns or I mark papers by lanterns and my eyes can only last so long and so I did bed fairly early here. There's times where it seems like I've been really lonely and it helps if you go out and like going to town. Everybody is very friendly and they would sit and talk with you. They don't even know you. You sit there and share their food. I really thought when I came here I wanted to get involved with women's groups or something with women other than my teaching. And I still hope to do this in the future. But it seems like I go to town and sitting and talking with. Men. A lot. And. A lot of it is that the men speak English. More so than the women. Grandma's house. I'm living next to. Them and I wish you a safe journey. OK good.

When men sit with the men and they do their thing and the women stay with the women they do their thing. So. I'm not quite sure what they're saying about me. I guess I has some leeway since I'm a foreigner. The it is it doesn't drive in 100 degree weather to get to at home a Peace Corps veteran volunteer foster this town is made even more remote because few attempt to travel the road. You know where this place is so bad that many people refuse to visit the place and live in some really almost unbearable. Good morning. But despite all of that. We have some people who are devoted

enough to bring. Through this and I commend the people. One of them is Paul frost. Here he loudly get in gotcha. So by Sue that within the few years he spent here he has most of the language she. So that you wouldn't believe. That is it for him. He's just one of us. The Peace Corps came in and made every volunteer comfortable. It would never adjust to the country. Part of the adjustment is going through all those emotional processes and anger and that is discussed and then misunderstandings and so beyond giving just minor comforts and support in giving people clues on how they can deal with it. There's very little peace corps can do to support the volunteers in consequence.

You'll naturally have the full range of human behavior because these people are under great stress doing their own thing and you know. All the ways. That people deal with stress in the states you'll find them here. You'll have people going you know screaming rampages and people people getting drunk and and it's not the rule. And it doesn't happen very often but all of us have moments that we just wish never happened. You know that you have it's just the most amazing thing when you first get here and all the kids are just LOVE YOU TO DEATH. But after a couple months and the kids are still seeing their little rhymes that you and I always clustering around you. Sometimes I want to kill them. I mean what it just leave me alone for a minute please. That kind of thing. And I have a lot of sympathy for those people who who decide that it's not for them because it's really stressful sometimes. And in many ways those of us who have

stuck it out are basically lucky because we managed to find ways of balancing it. Many volunteers I'm gonna have a young person to help them with daily chores. Joe's father was the paid caretaker of Paul's building and now Cujo works steadily for pong. They've become good friends each learning from the other. I've sort of taken him as my ideal pupil because I'm trying to teach the students and using classes where there were over 60 kids with no equipment. My teaching instinct was always frustrated. So when I came here you basically didn't know how to read. I didn't know anything about science. And I took it on myself to teach me. Right now here I've got a me writing pen pal letters to a pen pal in the States. And. He regularly writes four and five page letters now. That's really. Good. I've had the privilege while I've been in

Ghana. I've been enjoying more than just one new culture I've worked for so since I've been here with Japanese workers who've also been volunteering at the school. One thing that I really admire about the Japanese is that they have incredible. Stick to it in a stubbornness. It's there in a much worse situation than we are just because of the language problem. You know the least I can talk to most Canadians they can't and for instance I had a housemate my first Japanese housemate and he got malaria as well and he got a very severe form. And because it took so long to get to the hospital he ended up being in a coma for two weeks. And after that he spent a month in recuperation and he had to be sent back to Japan for a neurology exam. And yet after all that three months later he was back in the school teaching.

You know I'm going to bed. Yes I do. America no wait to hear Paul learn the native language. By spending all these free hours and weeks he has immersed in a small village three miles from in this village Rio Boney he became a close friend of the high priest who everyone called Nona. Every year at this time of year all of non-US disciples are young people who you know who he has trained. All come back from the yam Festival and it's a lot of fun as they spend just about the whole week dancing and certain parts they dance for 24 hours a day. Like any religion. I think the fetish priests are just trying to explain. To people the wonders of the natural world and. Trying to explain to explain all the terrible things that nature does to them.

They are always encouraging Why don't you dance why don't you dance. When I do they're very they get very very serious. And after a few minutes if I'm really getting energetic I'll come up and now they'll throw me off. And will take me away because they're they're convinced that. That when you're dancing. The god is liable to come and enter you. And. In that situation they're afraid that you will hurt yourself you'll try to do some flips or you'll strain yourself and because you're not you have because I haven't been trained. In being a fetish priest. I don't have. The skills to control that. So they're afraid that I'll become psychotic or hurt myself. By January my my second year I was spending two nights everyone can do one.

Talking to people and that was great except that during January. Any warm appeared and Rabbani. And at that point. About. Half the village at the war had this parasite. On. Anyone is a microscopic parasite which lives in the water. And when you drink it it grows in your body until it's over a meter in length and it lodges in a lamb in about 12 months later. It's a release is a toxin and burns his way out to release new eggs into the water. It's an incredibly painful disease. It causes incredible hardship. People are on their backs for months. And all their farms degrade their villages to create. And the amazing thing is with all the trouble that it causes it's easily preventable. There are two things One is you just have to keep people with the guinea worm out of the water so that they can't lay the

eggs. And then in case a few rays get into the water you need everyone else just to run with water through a single piece of cloth to catch the eggs. And with those two steps you can completely solve the problem. For the past two years. Paul has worked tirelessly to get the people in the villages to filter their water and thus prevent the guinea worm. Since women are the main ones who collect the water he's made a special effort to talk with them and has gotten promising results. Well it's been very encouraging that over two years I have seen an improvement in the first village where I kind of followed my way around. We had a quite a large drop the first year from 64 cases I mentioned to last year they only had four or five cases. Yeah I'm quitting. I would put it of course right

that I I helped supply the filters which they used to filter their water to stop getting her and she may say you need to be away my downfall. And so we are very great friends. See I don't want to I mean yeah. He sells more than more than friends we're brothers. The idea if I may I'd you know. Think. That was the thing. Were. We want villages that the main struggle against some of the most impoverished conditions in the world. It took so little to make a big difference in their lives. For instance Paul's project with the guinea one encouraged the Canadian Ministry of Health and Global

2000 to increase their efforts to eliminate the guinea worm in Africa in the next five years. The Peace Corps plans to increase its 6000 volunteers now in the field to 10000 by mid 1990s and the Japanese have experienced a four fold increase in jail OCV volunteers in the past decade. All this done in the spirit of cooperation they are getting the AOL way. I can't. I

Major funding for this program was provided by the Hosa bank of NDH and additional funding was provided by Delores and Lloyd Jones. Via us.