The two young Americans, Peace Corps volunteers with Tanzania’s Public Works Division (PWD), were venting their frustrations in a bar in Musoma. “PWD wants to construct culverts and bridges but won’t pay for labor,” griped a normally amiable Gil Crosby. “And we need at least thirty guys just to do the bridge on the Ikizu-Ikoma road” added his tall partner, Neil Christianson. Glumly, he took another swig of Tusker beer.

“Ehh, I hear you,” replied the dignified African sharing their table. “President Nyerere expects Tanzanians to volunteer labor for the good of the country. But of course, they do not. Therefore, little is accomplished. This hurts our district.” Then he mentioned a problem of his own. The district council for which he worked had difficulty collecting taxes because the people were so poor. “And if we took their cows as taxes they would make war on us,” he declared.

Silently, the three men pondered their respective situations. But then the eyes of the African council employee brightened. Leaning across the table, he grinned. “Sikia,” hear me, he said, “The district council will provide funds to hire laborers if you withhold half their salaries to pay their taxes. Then our district will get culverts and bridges as well as tax revenue.” The spirits of the two volunteers abruptly improved. Their new friend must be more than a mere employee of the district council. “Have another beer,” they chorused.

When next the call for laborers went out, over a hundred men showed up. Neil and Gill only needed thirty but when the taxes of the first group of men were paid, they hired new people. Never again did the two engineers have trouble finding laborers.

Followers of Stories of East Africa will know that, from 1964-67, I was a Peace Corps volunteer forester in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Previous posts have described some of my duties and experiences. Now, however, I want to introduce volunteer colleagues who were engaged in other activities.

Probably the largest number of volunteers in my Peace Corps group, Tanganyika V, were engineers with the Public Works Division (PWD) and Water Development and Irrigation Division (WD&ID). The following is based on interviews with three of them.

Volunteers working for PWD constructed culverts and bridges on secondary roads, most of which were unsurfaced dirt and, therefore, often impassible during the rainy season (which kept farmers from getting their crops to market). They established work camps, ensured supplies were hauled, expedited the acquisition of trucks and bull dozers, hired laborers, and supervised construction. They also trained young Tanzanians to continue the work after the volunteers returned to the U.S. Work areas were large–200 miles (322 km) of road in the case of Neil Christianson and Gil Crosby.

Volunteers working for WD&ID carried out surveys. These included geophysical surveys to find potential well sites, core drilling to determine if soils were strong and dense enough to support dams without leaking, and topographic surveys to find where to place dams, and how to distribute water from wells, dams, and rivers to users. Water development was especially important in Tanzania because large areas of the country are arid and semi-arid, with high temperatures and rates of evaporation, and erratic, unreliable rainfall. Many streams are seasonally dry.

Some engineers were assigned Tanzanians to train. Neil Christianson and Gil Crosby were impressed, not only by them, but also by the ingenuity and teamwork displayed by the other members of their African crews. In some cases, a ‘trainee’ already was better trained for certain jobs than the volunteer. Bob Ferris states that his crew could do most of the work without him.

Time spent in the field varied. For instance, PWD engineers Neil Christianson and Gil Crosby spent their first six months living in tents, choosing sites to upgrade, and establishing work camps before moving to Musoma, from which they visited each work site once a week to monitor progress. WD&ID engineer, Bob Ferris, based in Mwanza, made one to two week-long safaris to sites of interest within his district. Eric Ries, also with WD&ID, was away so much that he seldom used his apartment in Dodoma.

When in the field, the engineers lived in tents, caravans, and small huts. Those working in teams generally hired an African mpishi or cook. Bob Ferris, with no team mate, cooked for himself. They boiled their drinking water or mixed it with Clorox (then covered the taste by drinking it with orange squash). Or, they brought jerry cans of town water, which was safe to drink, on safari but then had to ration its use. Bob Ferris managed on 2-3 gallons per day for up to two weeks. His baths were just a quick splash once a day with cold water. Whenever Neil Christianson and Gil Crosby saw heavy rain coming their way, they stripped naked and ran out into it with a bar of soap.

Tanzania’s official workday ran from 7am to 2:30pm (in any case, WD&ID engineers couldn’t survey on hot afternoons because heat waves rising off the ground made it impossible to get accurate readings with their transits). Afternoons were spent writing up field notes, reading, and napping (in the shade of a nearby tree on hot days), evenings drinking beer, orange squash or gin and tonic, and listening to the radio while insects beat against the brightly lit glass of their Petromax and hurricane lanterns. Sometimes they just sat in the dark wondering at the stars before crawling under mosquito nets to fall asleep to the whine of mosquitoes, or, if deep in the bush, the mournful whoop of a prowling hyena.

However, even volunteers who spent most of their time in the bush periodically got into town for at least short periods. Bob Ferris’s idea of heaven was returning to Mwanza from a long safari and soaking in a tub of hot water while sipping an ice-cold drink, listening to Johnny Mathis, and reading his mail. Never again, he says, will he take flush toilets for granted. Bob fondly remembers the Liberty Cinema, which showed Elvis Presley and old Western films (The cinema in Musoma was named The Diamond Talkies), the Fourways Grocery Store, which let volunteers pay when they could, and the Barclays Bank manger, who once let Bob overdraw his account before going on vacation.

Some memories:

Experiencing that anxious what do I do now? feeling when, on his first day in the field, Bob Ferris, a greenhorn with no practical engineering experience, stepped from his tent to find four men waiting for instructions.

Watching tribal dances on Saba Saba Day. Bob Ferris was especially impressed by the booming drums.

Their vehicle halted by high water crossing the road, Neil Christianson and Gil Crosby finding the occasion becoming a social event. They made many new friends that day with African lorry drivers and bus passengers, whose vehicles also had been stopped.

African friends of Gil and Neil joking that PWD stood for Punda Wengi Dunia, which roughly translates as “The World is Full of Jackasses.” (The Swahili word for ‘many’ is nyingi but in the Musoma area was pronounced ‘wengi.’)

Bob Ferris giving an impromptu demonstration to students at a primary school where he was surveying a water distribution system. The kids became so excited that the headmaster adjourned classes to let them watch Bob and his crew work. Chattering away like little mice they exclaimed in surprise and awe when allowed to look through his transit scope at a crew member 100 yards (90m) away.

Ever since leaving Tanzania over half a century ago, members of our Peace Corps group have periodically posed the question: Did Tanzania benefit from our presence?

The PWD engineers think so, possibly because they were able to see their efforts bear visible fruit in the form of new dams and culverts, not to mention trained Tanzanians capable of carrying out engineering duties. For instance, Neil Christianson and Gill Crosby completed over 90% of the culvert and bridge construction they were assigned. Furthermore, they trained five young Africans who proved capable of continuing the work after the two volunteers left. Consequently, Neil and Gil felt good about their impact on the country. (Using Google Maps, Neil recently discovered that at least one of the bridges that he, Gil, and their crew constructed still exists).

The two WD&ID engineers were less positive, probably because their outputs, being in the form of maps and tables, were less strikingly visible. Furthermore, they suspect that few of the dams, which they (and Eric’s partners, Richard Russell, Jeff Gabiou, and George Frame), surveyed, were ever constructed. Consequently, other than training two assistants to take on his duties, Eric feels he didn’t do much for Tanzania. Bob Ferris thinks his major contribution may have been in showing Tanzanians that not all whites felt superior to them.

I wonder what the volunteers’ British supervisors and Tanzanian work crews thought?