Out of Africa Came a New View of Life

Just like any other kid growing up, James P. Ramstack had loads of ideas about what to do with his life. Most of all, though, he wanted to do something different.

And he did. Ramstack, now 25, went to Africa for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer after graduating from St. Mary’s College of California in Moraga, where he majored in French and history.

“I was thinking about doing work in art restoration,” he said, “but a friend always talked about the Peace Corps.

“He talked about it all the time, and then a Peace Corps recruiter came on campus and I met him.”

Now home in Anaheim, where he was born and grew up, Ramstack talked about the sometimes difficult, sometimes rewarding experience that gave him a new outlook on life.

Ramstack first went to a village in Velingara, Senegal.

“I know so much more about myself after living in an area where they didn’t have very much and life was much more simple than I had,” he said.

Ramstack’s role was to help organize the village and promote good health practices.

“The Peace Corps teaches cultural sensitivity, and at first I thought they were looking to me for help,” Ramstack said of the villagers. He learned the Senegalese language and lived in a mud hut as he tried to help the villagers determine what their needs were.

But, he said, the chief and the people in the village “thought my role was to provide their needs rather than help them work for what they needed.”

Of that experience, he said: “I loved it there, but sometimes it was hard. There were times of a lot of conflicting emotions, and a lot of the time I was on an emotional roller coaster. Sometimes you don’t know how to carry yourself.”

After a year of a mostly unsuccessful effort to help the villagers develop their community, Ramstack moved to the larger city of Ziguinchor, where he taught accounting and other financial management procedures to the many tailors who worked there.

“I was happier there because it was a place I could be productive. They were also interested in my work and what I could do for them,” he said.

He noted that his impression is that clothing is very important to Africans. Most of the people there do not have much money, he said, “so they do everything they can to pretend they do. The clothes and image they present is very important.”

Of himself, he said: “Now I’m much more conscious of what I do and the way I want to live. Life there was more simple. When I was there, I didn’t have many things, but I felt I was better off without all the amenities.”

What is more important, Ramstack said, “is to find a life and job I can enjoy. I thought I would be so far behind everyone my age when I came back, but that’s not so.”

As a matter of fact, he said, “I’d like to go back and work for some other undeveloped country.”