It sounds like they would be perfect for Serbia. Sort of like our American cousins, and, guess what they brought with them... of course I don't know how popular they would be with the Albanian taliban.
Don't worry Tom, I'm sure corporate warlords inc. will be headed your way, if there not there already.
Sincerely, Tom L.
Thomas Kruse wrote:
> >From Tom Lehman:
>
> >Whatever happened to the Peace Corp?
>
> I know this was posed more as comment than query, but what the heck.
>
> Here's in Bolivia the Peace Corp is alive and well ... though I'm not
> certain that's good for Bolivia. I have friends in the Corps bureaucracy
> here, honest folk trying to do a good job. I have, however, a very low
> opinion of the Corps overall. Missionary zeal, which is rife in the Corps,
> always gives me the willies. With the Corps all too often such zeal aims to
> "structurally adjust" local peoples into "rational market actors" and
> otherwise funcionalize people to the system; part the development appratus
> that James Ferguson aptly dubbed an "Anti-politics Machine" (Cambride U
> Press, 1990). Development fads abound: microcredit, gender-and-everything
> projects, etc. etc.
>
> I also tell my undergrads to stay away from volunteers here. The best way
> to impede good relations with communities here is to be pegged as a Corps
> member. They also do all the typical gringo crap: flaunt wealth, talk too
> loud in English, dress like slobs (folks here have never understood why
> people with money would choose to look like shit), and do drugs. The latter
> is mentioned not in some puritanical spirit. Rather, doing coke nad making
> that scene here only underscroes class/cultural differences, and draconian
> anti-drug laws here (written by the US Embassy) presume guilt until innonce
> is established, which can prove to be a practical problem.
>
> On the other hand, I'll note some very good work done by volunteers in AIDS
> education, in coordination with the local gay community! Such "partnership"
> gave the local gay (male exclusivley) community some real support and
> affirmation, something they have never gotten from any Bolivian agency or group.
>
> Tom
>
> Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia
> Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242
> Email: tkruse at albatros.cnb.net