In mid-June of 1969, the time had finally arrived for me to say goodbye to my family, friends, and MG (I took my guitar with me) and board a plane for Oakland California, which was the gathering spot for the Peace Corps trainees for two days of orientation. It was the first time I had ever been in an airplane, and I found it was exciting to be flying across North America. While all the other passengers were reading magazines, I had my curious eyes glued to the changing landscapes below, slowing moving across the window.
Once in Oakland, I met the other Peace Corps volunteers in the program. It was a friendly and interesting group that I found very interesting because they had come from all over the US, and like me, they were all recent elementary education graduates with a specialization in science. I enjoyed learning about their lives. After we had been thrust together as a group for a while, one guy from New York City, who was Jewish, asked me if I was Jewish, and I have always wondered what it was about me that made him think I might be. Was it my looks? My beliefs? I have no idea.
Our orientation completed, we were bussed across the bridge to San Francisco where we boarded our long flight to Hawaii. Upon landing at Hilo, Hawaii on the Big Island, our group was welcomed to paradise with the traditional flowered leis put around our neck, and then transported by a bus to our training site at a long, old, tin-roofed, school building, located at a tiny place called Pepeekeo.
Pepeekeo was basically just a lonely crossroad of two rarely used secondary roads, distinguished only with a small old convenience store and a few houses. The whole area was surrounded by fields of sugar cane, but down the long sloping fields, this rural Indiana boy was excited to spot the blue Pacific Ocean, stretching out along the horizon.
We were led to our barracks; a dormitory room created in the former school classroom. We threw our baggage onto the floor beside our bunks, then proceeded to make our beds using the folded sheets and wool army blankets that sat on each bunk. We were all tired from the long flight and time change, but hungry, so at the allotted time we all gathered in the large basement room of the school house that was our cafeteria.
As part of our training we were fed Filipino food; a lot of spiced vegetables, chopped meat, rice, and trays of fresh tropical fruit. It was a new cuisine for me, but I found it very appetizing until after a solid month of the non-stop Filipino fare, I found myself craving a cheeseburger and fries.
Below are photos of Pepeekeo, and the sugarcane fields.
View my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
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