Hi there, it’s Betsy Harris, although I’ve been Betsy Pope for more than 40 years. Elizabeth Pope on formal occasions. So sorry can’t make the reunion this year, but I’m happy to chime in on this panel. Rick Brooks reached out, and we had fun exchanging war stories about our misspent youth . Plus he shamed me into attemping a voice memo on Beloit and Peace Corps experience. (Which appears to have failed, which is why I’m resorting to print.) 

    It’s painful to admit what a little idiot I was fifty years ago and how I wasted all the opportunities Beloit had to offer. I’d never visited the campus before I showed up that first day…I’d met a recruiter in New York who sold me on the flexibility and the practicality of the Beloit Plan. It was like Antioch but took only four years instead of five.

    And the study abroad programs were to die for — Istanbul, Athens, Taiwan, places I longed to know. I caught the travel bug at the age of  seven — my aunt lived in Tokyo and she sent me those little tabi socks, like gloves for your feet. They different from the white cotton anklets with lace ruffles that I wore.  I realized then that the world was wonderful, wide and mysterious.  I wanted to see as much of it as I could.

    So I landed at Beloit with no plan, no strategy, no goals…zilch. I picked courses by professor, not subject matter. I was a philosphy major because it had fewer required courses than English. And I had some crackin’ professors: Shakey Lou Williams, Scott Crom, Bob Ray — all so generous, and so wise. Why didn’t I get to know them better? I basically kissed off Bob Irrman’s excellent courses and I’ve kicked myself so many times since then— reading Wolf Hall  or when my Shakespeare group read the history plays during long Portland winters. 

    Anyway, besides being unfocused in my studies, I failed to craft a brilliant Field Term. Not only was I clueless, disaffected and floundering — I was in love. Like a fool I followed the guy to NIH, and enlisted as a Normal Volunteer Patient, which meant we lived in the hospital and participated in various studies. It was the height of the Vietnam War and there were a lot of guys who were avoiding the draft, including an assortment of Mennonites. One Antioch student was assigned to eat the same breakfast, the same lunch and the same dinner for three months — some sort of nutritional study. I remember him licking the aluminum foil butter wrapper to make sure the calorie count was correct. 

    The field term was amusing but had nothing to do with furthering my academic goals, even if I had any. 

    And did I apply for one of the many study abroad programs I’d lusted after? No. That’s one of the great regrets of my life. I went to see the Dean to enquire about the semester in Paris. He asked me if I dreamt in French. No, I said, flustered and left in disappointment. And that was that. I still remember how jealous I was when the group came home, wearing matching Breton navy blue fisherman sweaters, talking about Les Evenements in May 1968. 

    Somehow, I made it through to graduation, went home to Macon, Ga and worked at the local newspaper for a year, while waiting to hear from Peace Corps, which had intrigued me since high school.  On my application, I wrote my objective was“working with children” because that’s what women say when they don’t know what to do with their lives. 

    Peace Corps accepted me and I spent a memorable summer in Morrison Colorado, in the foothills of the Rockies, studying Arabic and learning to be a garderie girl, That meant I would introduce Moroccan kindergarten teachers to the latest early education methods. For which I had no training whatsoever.

    I almost got de-selected (i.e. kicked out) because the Moroccan teachers thought I was too outgoing and flirty for a such conservative culture, but I made it through training and boarded the plane to Rabat. Our new director and his family accompanied us: Dick Holbrooke — yes, that Dick Holbrooke and I have lots of stories about him I will tell anybody over a glass or two of wine. (For what it’s worth, most of us adored him.  He was smart, funny and incredibly supportive of the volunteers. We never saw the dark ambition that is described in every book and profile of him.)

    My first post was Safi on the Atlantic coast, the former sardine capital of the world, until the phosphate industry polluted the seas and decimated the catch.

    The kindergarten directrice thought I’d enjoy living rent-free in a room in the abandoned sardine factory that housed the kindergarten downstairs. There was a straw mattress on a wooden platform, a chair and some scratchy blankets. I have never been so lonely and homesick in my life. I would hold my tiny transistor radio out the window twisting it to catch the faint crackle of a Beatles song from the Gibraltar radio station. And I would cry and cry. Eventually, I found a six-dollar-a month apartment and my outlook improved.

    Even though I’d been a respectable Arabic student in Morrison, in-country I couldn’t understand what people were saying, so they thought I was a bit dim. Amusing but dim. I would follow tourists in the streets in case they were English-speaking. There were three other Peace Corps volunteers in Safi, and I would have gone nuts without their company. But as time passed, the Arabic became easier and one day I realized I understood the conversation of the two women seated behind me on the souk bus. Another night, I dreamt in Arabic.

    After a year in Safi, I spent  two years in Fez, as a TEFL teacher, skills that have proved handy even now tutoring refugees from Africa and the Middle East. By the time I left, I knew street slang and could imitate the accent of an old Fessi woman. (All this thanks to a live-in Moroccan boyfriend; “I slept with my library”, as the French say.) 

    I’m sure other Peace Corps volunteers and international workers can attest to the confidence — even cockines —that comes when you finally understand another culture and language. You get addicted to the adrenaline rush of deciphering the exotic, the strange, the mysterious. You get to the point where you can anticipate what people are going to say. You’re at home anywhere.

    Did Beloit help prepare me for this cross-cultural odyssey? It’s hard for me to tease out what part is my temperament or my nomadic childhood (my dad was transferred many times  so new schools, new friends, new beginnings were familiar.) But a good liberal arts education, even if I kissed off half of it, does encourage openness, curiosity, and a willingness to take chances and make mistakes. Somebody told me that I don’t have conversations, I conduct inquisitions. The upshot is that I can talk about anything for five minutes but nothing for six. 

    That has served me well in the years since. In 1976, on a mini-reunion of my ex-Peace Corps pals in Washington, D.C. I met Larry Pope, a Foreign Service Officer just home from a posting in Libya. Over the next few months, we spent hours on the phone, visited in Nashville  where I was a UPI reporter and got married a few months later. (This. after spending a grand total of 2.5 -3 weeks in each other’s presence, but that’s a story for another day. ) 

All told, I’ve lived 11 years overseas in Morocco, Tunisia, Bahrain and Chad. We almost added Kuwait to the list, when President Clinton nominated Larry to be ambassador, but Jesse Helms had other ideas. Helms refused to give Larry and several other career officers confirmation hearings. So we said sayonara, and headed to Portland, a decision neither of us regrets. 

    So, maybe I owe that dean of study abroad programs my profound thanks…. If he hadn’t squelched my wanderlust, who knows what would have happened.

    Come see me if you’re in Portland and we’ll sit on the front porch — or around the fire — and talk about old times.