Work in Africa taught this lesson: Wealth is a tool, not an end in itself

Published 11:09 pm Thursday, June 19, 2008

Most of us know these idealistic words, spoken by President John F. Kennedy on his inauguration day: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

From the same speech, delivered Jan. 20, 1961, came this: “To the peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves.”

In short order, Kennedy put those words into action. He established the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961. In the years since, more than 190,000 Peace Corps volunteers have served in 139 countries.

Two weeks after the launch of the Peace Corps, a “CBS Reports” documentary profiled a lesser known organization. “Crossroads Africa: Pilot for a Peace Corps” was the story told by reporters Howard K. Smith and the legendary Edward R. Murrow.

Operation Crossroads Africa — ever heard of it?

Everett’s Carol Williams lived it.

Now 72, she was a University of Washington student when she spent a summer with the group in Cameroon, in central Africa. That was 1958, the first year Operation Crossroads Africa sent young Americans abroad. Its aim was to foster understanding while helping impoverished people.

This summer, the Peace Corps will begin gathering stories and pictures in anticipation of its 50th anniversary in 2011. Operation Crossroads Africa, the Peace Corps progenitor, is already there.

On Saturday, Operation Crossroads Africa will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a church service followed by an African feast at the United Nations in New York. Williams would love to be there. She’s in need of knee surgery and can’t make it, but the milestone has stirred a flood of memories.

Williams, who was Carol Troffer back then, got involved through Seattle’s University Presbyterian Church. It was a Presbyterian minister from New York’s Harlem, the Rev. James H. Robinson, who founded Operation Crossroads Africa in 1958.

Unlike Peace Corps volunteers, participants in Operation Crossroads Africa pay to go. The fee for the faith-based group’s Africa program is now $3,500.

“I spent every penny I had earned all my life,” said Williams, whose parents worried about safety and didn’t want her to go.

As part of a small group in the larger pilot program of about 150 students, she helped build a school and church in Cameroon. “My job was to break up rocks into gravel, and that would go into making cement bricks. Talk about an education,” Williams said.

In Africa, she found a good deal more than she expected. Along with the unforgettable experience, she met the love of her life.

John Williams, who had come from Covina, Calif., was there with the United Presbyterian Church. He was teaching at a college and serving as a chaplain in Cameroon. Carol returned to Seattle after her summer ended, but by 1960 they were married.

At 78, John Williams remembers wearing shorts and T-shirts year-round in Cameroon, which is a few degrees above the equator.

After they married, they went back to Cameroon for a few years. John Williams was director of a boys school, and their first child, Rose-Marie, was born there.

They lived in a brick house built years before for missionaries. They took pills to battle malaria and got used to monster-sized bugs. “Cockroaches were everywhere, 2 to 3 inches long,” Carol Williams said. “There were big scorpions, that’s the main reason we kept the grass cut. If a fly went into your soup, you said ‘Hmm, small beef,’ and ignored it.”

After their return, they settled in Everett. In the 1970s, John Williams owned Archives Christian Bookstore on Evergreen Way. With a degree in speech pathology, Carol Williams worked as an audiologist and ran her own office in Everett. After retiring, she rekindled her interest in international relief by traveling to Guatemala with the Hands for Peacemaking Foundation.

Williams remembers hardship, but more than that, she has never lost sight of lessons she learned that summer in Africa, 50 years ago.

“It changed my perspective of what I wanted out of life, particularly with regard to wealth and possessions,” she said. “Those became tools instead of goals. That’s what they should be.”

Find out more

For information about Operation Crossroads Africa, go to www.operationcrossroadsafrica.org.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.