Peace Corps Volunteers in Rural Botswana

Three principal goals of Peace Corps training are: (1) to enable the Peace Corps volunteer to learn about another culture; (2) to allow host-country nationals to learn about the U.S.; and (3) to provide the preparation for imparting middle-level technical assistance to the host country. Goal number three almost always requires the adaptation of the Peace Corps volunteers' skills directly to exotic, seemingly anomalous, indigenous institutions and usages. The Peace Corps engaged me to undertake preparation and design of a training program which would in part directly address the following problem: how to provide the Peace Corps trainee with foreknowledge of those institutions and usages of Setswana society which would most likely present to the volunteer the greatest puzzlement, confusion, and demoralization. In carrying out this task I drew heavily on introspection of my own "conflicts" in adapting to rural Botswana life as well as on interviews with experienced or former Peace Corps volunteers. Two critical domains of conflict were shown almost inevitably to cause problems for Peace Corps volunteers in their work: (1) problems involving the consciousnesss of time, and (2) problems in the management of face-to-face interaction. The goal of this paper is to present the notion of culture conflict from a phenomenological perspective, i.e., in terms of the subjective meanings of these Tswana institutions in the life-world of the Peace Corps volunteer in contrast to their subjective meanings in the life-world of the Tswana. Trois buts principaux de l'entraînement du Peace Corps sont: (1) permettre au volontaire du Peace Corps de connaître une autre culture; (2) permettre aux ressortissants du pays-hôte de s'instruire sur les Etats Unis; et (3) fournir l'instruction nécessaire pour communiquer au pays-hôte l'assistance technique de "niveau moyen." Le but numéro trois exige presque toujours l'adaptation directe de la compétance technique des volontaires du Peace Corps aux institutions et coutumes indigènes exotiques, apparemment anormales. Le Peace Corps m'a engagé pour préparer et établir le plan pour un programme d'instruction orienté partiellement vers la solution directe du problème suivant: comment fournir aux volontaires du Peace Corps la préconnaissance de ces institutions et coutumes de la société du Setswana plus susceptibles de l'intriguer, le troubler et le démoraliser. En réalisant cette tâche j'ai compté énormément tant sur l'introspection de mes pro