They were called “Hijos de Kennedy” – Kennedy’s kids. They were the members of the Peace Corps who had heard President Kennedy’s call and answered, giving two years of their lives in the pursuit of peace. Their missionary zeal, to share their energy and expertise throughout the world, was and continues to be a shining example of who we are as Americans … or who we could and should be.
One of those young people was Jerry Ferro, otherwise known as my spouse. He went off with several others from Syracuse in 1963 to save a small portion of the world in Colombia, South America. Born and raised in Utica, this would be his great adventure. He was first off to California to study Spanish and Colombian culture. After that, it was a strenuous stint of outward-bound training in Puerto Rico where the recruits were challenged with rappelling over dams, water rescues and surviving in the jungles. Jerry also tells about how they were trained to deliver babies.
My husband-to-be then began his first assignment in a small town in southern Columbia, Gigante. If you search for Gigante on Google, there will be a picture of that square and the legendary tree that is at its center. It was there that “Jefe” (chief) or “Doctor” (honorific) Ferro began his Peace Corps experience. As a volunteer, he was paid a stipend of $100 a month. With that amount he had to pay for his rent, food and ancillary support, such as laundry.
I often wonder if I could have weathered the dramatic changes that he faced: unfamiliar language, climate and customs as he negotiated all of these as well as the implementation of his mission.
And that mission, described and lived during his two and a half years in Colombia, was to design and build one-room schools which would serve educational needs of the campesinos (farmers) in the small hamlets that are sprinkled throughout the mountains.
Colombia is a country of differing altitudes and climates ranging from deserts, rainforests and flat plains to the heights of the two mountain ranges that make up the Andes in that part of South America. For most of his tenure in Colombia, Jerry worked in mountains averaging an altitude of 13,000 feet. Temperatures at that altitude were warm during the day but intensely cold at night. Ordinary comforts such as electricity and potable water were scarce. Transportation was always sketchy. Roads such as we know them were rare. One got from one place to another mostly on an unpaved track that switched back and forth on the side of the mountain. … appropriately dotted with crosses marking where someone had fallen off.
Sometimes Jerry had the use of a jeep; other times, it was transport by mule. Jerry worked with the people in each vereda, (a small scattering of houses), to plan and execute the building of a one-room schoolhouse that included housing for a teacher. Presenting the committee with a model of that which they would build, the work group would provide all of the labor and most of the materials for building the school. Many times, the bricks for the building were manufactured from the soil on which the school would be built. As with the “Jefe,” metal for the roof and furniture would sometimes be brought to the site by wheeled vehicle, sometimes by four-footed animals.
The schools were constructed by a “Minga,” a Quechua word that means “we are all going to do this together,” a voluntary communal effort. Education was a prize for which they were willing to work. Everyone helped in some way and, so, when the building was completed, the community celebrated not only its unified effort but also the work of and appreciation for the Peace Corps volunteer, “Señor Jefe.” The campesinos marshalled their meager resources and threw a big party where the cervesa and aguardiente flowed and where, amidst the tamales and empanadas and fried plantains, because they were a scarcity, chickens were cooked in his honor.
As an aside, chicken was so scarce that there was a Colombian sumptuary law that only allowed the serving of chicken in restaurants on certain days of the week.
Jerry lived in several locations during his tenure in Colombia, each a destination which valued his skills as an architect and as one who could work closely with the local residents of these tiny mountainous settlements. There he was, the young man in his early 20s from Utica, New York, negotiating with government officials in Bogota and working hand-in-hand with subsistence farmers in the altitudes of the Andes. It was a true adventure, fulfilled by the work of his hands and the honor of chicken feasts.
That was almost 60 years ago, instantaneous in his memory, but eons away from people’s experiences today.
Ask Jerry. He has stories (and slides) that are eye-opening and uplifting about how this all worked. They are his war stories, his peace stories. In those stories there is a book locker that accompanied each PC volunteer. There is having to get used to hiring someone to do your laundry, eating unusual foods and working with tough, honest men and women who eked out subsistence lives on mountains where even the air was in short supply. There is the camaraderie of other volunteers, mule travel, making bricks by hand and seeing our common humanity through the sieve of another culture. Our family has always been enthralled by what he did and proud of his accomplishments but we’ve never been able to show that pride in any measurable way.
Several years ago, our son Ben accompanied Jerry on a trip to Colombia to celebrate the anniversary of the Peace Corps there. How things had changed. What was once a sleepy Caribbean coastal city with one good hotel, was now a large metropolitan tourist destination with high rise buildings. The little towns had grown. The past was just that … past. The flavor of what was some 50 or so years before now only existed in memories, in stories of what was.
Last Christmas, our daughter gave her Dad a pillow that was embroidered with the words reminiscent of the sentiment that the campesinos shared at the end of each celebratory feast: “Geraldo, gracias por tu servicios.” Gerald, thank you for your gift of service. A simple gift, but an acknowledgement that his children knew what he had achieved.
It meant the world to this particular “Hijo de Kennedy” that his children understand this time in his life and how he touched the wider world.
It will be his 81st birthday on April 19. If you see him, say “Hi” and wish him a happy birthday.
