August Odysseys – Peace Corps
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Your Lead Paragrpah goes hereDuring the filming of “The Endless Summer”, we knew there were surfers in Cape Town, South Africa. They were learning how to make surfboards, and all materials were being sent from Southern California.
There were no direct flights from New York to Cape Town. We had no choice but to stop in Senegal, Ghana, and Nigeria. An amazing thing happened in Ghana, we found our way to a beach and Bruce Brown was filming us giving surf lessons to the local children, teenagers, and adults. While we were having a fun time with the kids, a Caucasian man in his midtwenties approached us and while noticing our surfboards said, “WOW, what are you guys doing here?”.
And we explained that we were traveling the world filming a surf movie. Later on, I asked what he was doing here, since he was a young American. He responded that he was in the Peace Corps, being in 1963 John F. Kennedy was our president, and it was he who began the Peace Corps. What they did was travel to impoverished countries around the world, teaching them how to improve their lives. Such as, teaching them how to boil water, educate them on hygiene, and other necessities to improve their quality of life. The young man, actually helped us communicate with people, food, transportation.
The Peace Corps, is still in use today with young Americans who want to travel the world and enhance people’s lives. It was and still is a great thing that president JFK started and in general he was really admired at that time. The conclusion is not so positive, when we were in Cape Town surfing and helping the people there learn how to surf and make surfboards, our president was shot and killed. This made me reflect, as a young American how truly far away from home I was.
After a few weeks I got over it, and on our trip to Cape Town to Durban, we stumbled upon Cape St. Francis, the PERFECT wave.
