Walk on the Moon
One Giant Leap for Humankind
It is so amazing to see signs of a different world entering a community that had virtually been unchanged for so long. Obviously motor vehicles had become a part of their reality. Bicycles and some manufactured goods started to change their life. Piles of surplus second-hand clothing from the U.S.A. found its way into rural markets. We got used to seeing a young man in a loincloth going out to the fields sporting a bowling shirt printed with the name of some Midwest bowling lanes, and monogrammed with the name of some guy! Perhaps we were as out of place as a bowling shirt in a bush village!
When there is going to be a festival in the village it is announced by the call of drums. The call echoes in the night, “the music is starting,” it invokes, “come join us!” It is a compelling signal, an urgent pounding rhythm – a pulsing heartbeat to accompanying the rapture of dancing feet.
I was drawn to village center and joined the circle; then from the swaying crowd individuals would go into the circle to dance, taking their turn, moving in sinewy grace and strength, keeping time to the rhythms and melodies of balaphones and drums. Each dance was a mixture of bravado and a challenge as the tempo accelerated and new dancers strutted into the center.
As one dance started an elder mother with shaved head and a skirt of indigo tie-dye entered the circle. She danced showing the beauty and agility of years of rhythmical work, a proud story in movement. As she moved in front of me, she continued her dance, looking at me in such a way that I knew she was inviting me to join her in the circle.
I went into the circle, our feet keeping time with the rhythms, and let the music take over my volition until all was a dance. She smiled, and I lost myself accompanying her and the pulsating instruments. As the music reached it crescendo, I heard the crowd chanting “Apollo!”
“Apollo” became a new dance. I also saw it painted in colorful letters above the windshields of several market busses and trucks. “Apollo” was the term at that time and place for what was “cool,” and “in.”
My Peace Corps service coincided with NASA’s Apollo missions preparing to eventually make a moon landing. On July 20, 1969, another goal of John F. Kennedy was accomplished on the Apollo 11 mission, when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Apollo Lunar Module and walked on the surface of the moon.
My site partner, Bill Gaines, and I sat on our porch that evening in July looking towards the setting crescent moon in the west. We had followed the moon landing on the Voice of America. Bill exclaimed, “Damn. Just imagine there are two astronauts walking up there!” It was hard to fathom in the darkening bush, as stars and village sounds filled our universe.
We think of the moonwalk as the height of accomplishment in the 20th Century. But Kennedy’s other vision of sending young emissaries of peace and progress out to developing countries to help them transition, and to create enduring relationships, was in many ways even more revolutionary, and had a more lasting and broader impact. Today some 250,000 returned Peace Corps volunteers occupy virtually all professions in the U.S., bringing with them the languages, insights, and cultural appreciation they learned during their service. Each one has the memories of numerous countries, communities, and individuals that they changed and who changed them.
News of the moon landing by the Americans spread by word of mouth through the market network. Two days later villagers said to us, “Did Americans really walk on the moon? They are going to break it!”
The image of Charles Lindbergh landing the Spirit of St. Lewis in a field in France on May 21, 1927 was repeated on a much smaller scale in Sirasso. In France he was welcomed by a crowd of tens of thousands, and made world history. One morning there was a small, single engine aircraft circling above, getting lower and lower. People came running to the clearing of the market place from all corners. There had been a wide road cleared alongside the market place up to the Sous-préfecture, and it soon became evident that the plane was going to land! No one in the village had seen an airplane at such close quarters! And it did land!
The pilot emerged to a crowd of shouting, excited Senufo. He had landed to find out where he was, and to get oriented. Then he took off again. By that afternoon, children in the village had made airplane push toys from bailing wire, strips of inner tube, and sticks. It was amazing the skill and imagination that kids used to create toys that they could push with a stick that actually had moving parts!
For Bill and me, our “walk on the moon” at the end of the 1960’s was to walk and live in an Iron Age village, adapt to a different way of life, and be change makers in a way that was respectful, necessary, and permanent. For young men coming from the United States, a modern industrial nation, it took more than a technological achievement for us to be able to say, as did Neil Armstrong, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
More stories to come!