Word: cvsf
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...began requesting passage to the U.S. There were many who felt they ought to stay, but not in their original duty stations. On the chance that there might be work elsewhere, they began drifting from one outpost to another. They would cruise into Peace Corps stations in the CVSF planes, look around town for a few days, and move on. It became a habit to find out where drifters were hanging out, and go there for short reunions. Most of the drifters couldn't find work and headed for home...
First of all, the Brazil project was obviously a rush job. On the Brazilian end, the CVSF headquarters put out a list of requests without much consultation with its branches in the interior. When Peace Corps directors from Rio flew into the interior on a check, they found most village officials very vague about what the volunteers would be doing. The CVSF people would assure the Corps officials that their superiors knew about work for the volunteers, but that unfortunately the superiors were travelling...
Quite often the CVSF requested volunteers for projects not slated to begin until long after the corpsmen's arrival date. In Lapa, geologists Chase and Onstad are still waiting for a long-promised well-drilling operation which is slowly working its way south from Joazeiro. Any irrigation work that Howard Hunt might have done in Lapa could only follow the installation of electricity--which occurred in July, eight months after Hunt arrived...
...Peace Corps--namely, that good old American roll-up-the-sleeves know-how is adequate for the underdeveloped world That formula hasn't worked in Brazil. Two geologists and one radio mechanic were unemployed this summer because they were no use at their jobs. Here were cases where the CVSF had come through on good jobs that were too specialized for the Americans. At least as many Peace Corpsmen in Brazil were out of work because of inexperience as because of negligence on the part of the CVSF...
Americans aren't the only ones with faith in U.S. know-how, Brazilians who joined the U.S. officials in preparing the Peace Corps project agreed that it didn't matter much that the volunteers had no professional training. Dr. Jose Pacheco Pimenta, head of the CVSF, travelled to Oklahoma University to encourage the volunteers in training. When one girl told him she didn't have enough experience to set up hospital labs in Brazil, he shrugged and said, "Come anyhow, you can learn." She said Pimenta seemed convinced that "Americans can do anything...