Word: pushtu
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Along the way, he manages to dally with two Cossack women and one semi-Chinese Amazon known as the Silk One. He picks up fluent Russian and pushes into Pushtu and Persian. As usual, his feats are preposterous and irresistible-if they happen to strike the reader in the right mood. Well and good, but Fraser had better not rest on his laurels. American Flashmaniacs can hardly be expected to wait much longer for him to come across with the great man's oft-hinted-at memories of cutthroat days at Little Big Horn and gunfights with Kit Carson...
...Pushtu. Inevitably, some ventures end in trouble. When corpsmen overcame a Senegalese tribal taboo against selling rice, farmers stopped growing it because the crop had lost its religious importance. An instructor watched helplessly while typewriters distributed in Ethiopia turned to junk for lack of care. Language training for the corpsmen was once squeezed into 50 hours, and one slum worker in a Chilean callampa did not have enough Spanish to ask how to get to the bus that would take him to work. "At times they miss the mark," Vaughn confesses. "And when they do, it's certain...
...back on target, Vaughn has upgraded pre-assignment training until it accounts for a quarter of his budget. Instruction has been stretched from eight to 14 weeks, with a minimum of 300 hours of language tutoring. Courses are offered in 183 tongues, including Twi, Tswana, Sesotho, Pushtu, Waray-Waray and Bicolano...
...problems, the frustrations, the harsh disappointments, and the serious occupational hazards-as one volunteer put it-of 'dysentery and boredom.' In a sense, the most unsettling challenge the volunteer faces is his publicity. A generous world press has drawn an unvarying image of volunteers effortlessly spouting Pushtu, Swahili, or Tagalog, of volunteers winning legions of friends while transforming economies ... To sum up: while the Peace Corps may not be as good as its reputation, it is almost as good as its intentions...
...other issue that might tilt Afghans into the Russian camp is their prickly relations with Pakistan. The rugged mountain terrain between the two nations is inhabited by wild Pushtu-speaking Pathan tribesmen-some 9,000,000 on the Pakistan side of the border alone. The Pathans love to shoot, make their own guns by hand, admit allegiance to neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan. (But once assimilated, the tall, tough Pathans make natural leaders: both the Afghan royal family and Pakistan President Ayub Khan are of Pathan stock.) The Afghans have piously encouraged the Pathans' demand for an autonomous state...