Interview Transcript
McNutt: This is an interview with Carolyn Olsen. It's July 14, 2006,
and we're at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta, Georgia, and this is about her involvement with the
West African Smallpox Eradication Program. This interview is
being conducted as part of the reunion marking the 40th
anniversary of the launch of this program. The interviewer is
Kathryn McNutt.
McNutt: I'm glad you're here. The purpose is to do an oral history. We
hope to capture for future generations the memories that you
have about all of the participants and their families in
eradicating smallpox in West Africa.
So, essentially we'll just kind of walk through your story and
what your and your family's experiences were. You were involved
in the Smallpox Eradication Program in Liberia. Could you tell
me what years you were there?
Olsen: We lived in Liberia from September '67 to May '70.
McNutt: And what was your family situation.
Olsen: My husband and I had just gotten married in March of '67. We
came to CDC for training in July, August, and September, and
then we went off to Liberia.
McNutt: That's a bit of a transition.
Olsen: Yes. We were in California before we came to Atlanta. So the
weather in Atlanta was hot and humid, and when we arrived in
Liberia, it was actually cooler and less humid.
McNutt: Really?
Olsen: Even though we were on the equator.
McNutt: So, what was your experience? Kind of paint a picture for me.
When you first got to Liberia, what were your living
arrangements?
Olsen: When we arrived in Liberia, the living arrangements were
interesting. The house was outfitted so that you had your basic
needs until your freight came. We were met at the airport, which
was about 25 miles from town, and taken into town. Dr. Shalimar
and his wife took us out to dinner. Then they took us to our
little house and said that they would come back the next day. It
was a Saturday. We were living in a kind of a compound, and
right at the gate there was somebody else's packing crate that
someone was living in. When your packing crates came, oftentimes
the local people would take the box, which was very large, and
make it into a house.
It was probably 9:00 PM, but when you're on the equator,
it gets dark at 6:00 PM and gets light at 6:00 AM. So we were
going to go to bed. We had sheets on the windows because, again,
we were just moving into this house. All of a sudden there was
this bright light. So we opened windows, and a transformer on
this pole was burning. We were going to call the fire
department, but we realized we didn't have a telephone. So we
just watched it and thought, "Well, if it comes to the house,
the house is made of cinderblock." But the fire just kind of
went out. And after it went out, we realized that we did have a
telephone. However, the black rotary telephone that was under
the bed had no cord or connection. Since we really didn't know
where we were-and our neighbors were gone for the weekend, so-it
was probably just as well that the telephone was inoperable. So
that was an interesting start.
McNutt: Is that when it hit you that you were in West Africa and not
the States?
Olsen: I think that when we stopped in Senegal before arriving in
Liberia, that was when it hit that us that we were in a very
different place. And living overseas then was very different
than it is now. There was no email or operable telephone. And so
basically for 3 years, we did not talk to our family. We sent
letters and, if necessary, there was teletype and occasionally a
telegram
Also, occasionally at work, my husband would talk to CDC. But
most of the time we were on our own.[ And, again, we didn't have
a telephone-even though we were in the biggest city in the
country.
McNutt: Monrovia?
Olsen: Yes. And on that first Monday, 2 days after we arrived, the
USAID van came to get my husband to go to work. There were about
20 men on the porch, and the driver said to my husband, "Oh,
they all want to work for your wife. They want to be the
houseboy." I looked at them, and I thought, "How am I ever going
to choose?" I'd never had house help. So I thought, "Well, I'll
just take the first person, and I'll just have a different
person every day until I pick somebody."
McNutt: You're trying them out.
Olsen: Trying them out. And so I told Timha I was only hiring him for
one day. And in Liberia, they speak pidgeon English. It's a
little different than English.
So Timha came to work for me that day. He was an older
man. I was only 25, so he probably was 35, but he seemed like an
older man. And we didn't have anything in the house, and so I
thought, "What can he do? Well, he could wash some clothes." So
I had him wash my husband's shirts and a couple of things
because we'd been traveling. After he finished that, he hung all
our clothes on the bushes outside so that they could get dry. I
thought that I could bring them in, so I said, he could go. And
then I looked a little later, and I thought the shirts were
mildewing because they all had blue and green on them. So I
brought the clothes in and I used all the different cleaners to
get the spots out, and I was thinking, "Boy, things really
mildew fast here." So when Dennis came home for lunch, I told
him we had to buy a dryer.
Well, the next day came and everybody was on my porch
again. Timha was there again, and I noticed that he was wearing
a country shirt, made out of indigo. I realized then that when
he was wringing the wet clothes, he had put them up against his
shirt, and the dye in his shirt had bled on all of our clothing.
Well, luckily, the driver had a friend or a brother or
something, and he introduced me to David Parker, who then became
our houseboy for the next 3 years. He was a very nice man, and
it worked out very well.
McNutt: You didn't have to try all of them.
Olsen: Didn't have to try. And Timha became our gardener. That was the
job he wanted. He didn't want to be the houseboy.
Another episode with Timha was funny. The farmers do
slash-and-burn in the fields. So I asked him to clean up the
yard, and all of a sudden I look out and there's fire.
Everything he cut down is burning. But other than that, keeping
the house was easy.
McNutt: You had electricity, you had a stove, refrigerator, a dryer.
Olsen: We bought a dryer, and we had a stove that was furnished. The
stove used gas, and so we always had to make sure, if we were
going to have company, that we had enough gas so that all of a
sudden we didn't run out in the middle of entertaining.
Somehow, USAID [US Agency for International Development] would
only give us one gas canister at a time.
But the people were very, very nice. We felt very
comfortable. And the American community was nice. But the
smallpox program didn't quite fit with the embassy and it didn't
quite fit with USAID, so we were kind of our own program.
I am an environmental engineer, and so I wanted to find a
job. I found one, working for a firm that was doing an extension
of the airport. But then someone who I didn't know took a job
that supposedly took a job away from a local person. The upshot
was that no dependents could work except as schoolteachers or
nurses, so I couldn't work.
And then they approached me and asked if I would substitute at
the American school. So I taught 7th through 12th-grade math. I
had never taught before, but somebody told me the first day of
school that you need to be really tough. So I was really tough.
Any time the kids were not good, I would immediately give them a
test. So after about a week, they just knew they were going to
be good when they came in.
And, having never had any education classes, I just taught
them like I was taught. Years later, it was rewarding when I met
some of my students who had actually done well. It was a relief
that I didn't do permanent damage.
McNutt: They can't blame you for anything.
Olsen: Right, right.
And then, I guess it was the second year, the principal or
the superintendent of the American school crossed the Liberian
government and was asked to leave Liberia, so I became
superintendent. One day I was sitting in my office and the phone-
I told you the phones didn't work, but all of a sudden the phone
on my desk rang. I was so excited. I picked it up and said,
"American Cooperative School," and they said, "Oh, wrong
number," and it never rang again.
But the thing that was so nice about our African
experience, it gave us a feeling not only for Africa but also
for what French countries were like, since we took trips, as
part of the smallpox program, to Ivory Coast, which is a
francophone country. And we were given vacations every 2 years
or so. On our first vacation, in l968, we went with a Peace
Corps charter to East Africa for 6 weeks. That was when Jomo
Kenyatta was Prime Minister of Kenya, and Uganda, Tanzania, and
Kenya were on such good terms with each other that they had
common currency.
McNutt: Really?
Olsen: The drought had not occurred yet in Ethiopia. It was a very
kind and gentle country under Emperor Haile Selassie. So we saw
part of Africa that no longer exists, and it was a very
enjoyable, interesting experience. It was also interesting to
see how that part of Africa was different than West Africa.
Now, we weren't always just going on vacations, but we
were able to go to Europe also. Neither of us had been there,
and to spend 6 weeks in Europe just wandering around was really
interesting. It was winter, so we ended up in a lot of art
museums and other museums. It gave us a whole different
perspective on the world.
McNutt: Sure.
Olsen: Those breaks were nice because, when we went back to Liberia,
we could kind of look at life a little differently. In Liberia,
there were only a couple paved roads, and we just looked at the
same thing every day.
And as far as the smallpox program goes, I did not go up-
country with Dennis because there was really no place to stay.
Later on, when we lived in India, I used to travel with him
because they had guest houses and different places where we
could stay. But oftentimes he would stay with Peace Corps
volunteers, and so a lot of the Peace Corps volunteers would
then come to stay with us when they came to Monrovia.
Toward the end of our stay, we got very excited because
cholera was all of a sudden detected in Sierra Leone. They
anticipated it coming into Liberia, so Dennis had an opportunity
to meet with President Tubman, who was one of what they called
an honorable. His parents had come back to Africa after Abraham
Lincoln was president, when many of the descendants of slaves in
the United States went back to Liberia. So Liberia was never
colonized.
But Liberia had an American influence. Their Pledge of
Allegiance is just like ours, with a few words changed, and
their flag is just like ours except it has only one star. And
during the Second World War, Roberts Field was used as a base
where the planes would fly to Africa from Brazil and then up to
Europe. In fact, sometimes you would see houses made of military
runway materials.
But in theory President Tubman was a benevolent dictator.
And when we came back, we were in Washington for a short time. I
would tell people that Liberia was the kind of place that, if
you went out at night, you always took a flashlight because
there were no lights except the Moon and the stars, and you
wanted to make sure you didn't step on a snake or step in a
hole. You had no fear of any of the people. And at that time in
Washington, DC, if you heard someone walking up behind you, you
immediately turned to see who was there.
I remember seeing the soldiers. They didn't carry real
guns; they carried wooden guns. And oftentimes, after a parade,
they would carry their shoes on their guns because they weren't
used to wearing shoes, but they had to wear them for the parade.
McNutt: How interesting.
Olsen: But socially, we had to make your own entertainment.
McNutt: Sure.
Olsen: The last year we were there, they brought in television. But
before that, it was the BBC news.
And, actually, Liberia was 45 minutes off of Greenwich
Mean Time. During World War II, there was supposedly a German
ship off the shore that sent word they wanted to meet with the
president of Liberia at 10 o'clock, and so Liberia changed its
time so that the Germans would be late, as 10 o'clock became
10:45 Liberian standard time.
McNutt: No way!
Olsen: Yes. But sometimes people would say that Liberia was like a
poorly done United States.
But we were in our 20s, and it was our first assignment.
We had a very enjoyable time and we met lots of people.
At the American school, about 50% of the children who I
taught were Americans, about 25% were from other embassies, and
the other 25% were Liberian students. Of this last group, some
had parents, who were doctors and honorables, and some students
were on scholarship. So it was a nice blending. We got to know
people from all kinds of different embassies, like the Asian
embassies. And if you were their child's schoolteacher, you were
a very special person. The students seemed to get together very
well. They took care of each other.
McNutt: So tell me a bit more about the social life. You were probably
one of the younger couples there, I'm assuming. What were the
social activities that you did?
Olsen: There were a lot of cocktail parties, and you found excuses to
have parties, like for St. Patrick's Day. The social life on
weekends was really out at the Voice of America transmitter
site, which was about 20 miles out of town. They had to maintain
short grass around the transmitter, so they made it into a 9-
hole golf course.
The golf holes were sand with a little bit of oil mixed in.
People kept the sand raked. So if you got out on the green, it
was like putting on the bottom of a sink: the ball went down
toward the hole, like water toward a drain. So you really had an
unfair advantage. But it was very interesting.
And we all had young Liberians as our caddies. They lived
near Harrisburg, which was where Voice of America was. My
regular caddy was Michael. He would make sure there were no
snakes where I was going. But I never had a bad lie because
Michael could pick up a golf ball with his toes, and by the time
I got up to my ball, it was sitting on top of a nice little tuft
of grass waiting to be hit.
One year before Christmas, Michael said, "Missy"-they
called a man Boss Man, and the ladies were called Missy-"Missy,
are you going to get me a Christmas present?"
"Well, Michael, what would you like?"
And he said, "I was looking in the book, and I think I
would like roller skates."
Now, there was no pavement. I mean, there was a dirt road
to get there, there was a dirt parking area, and there was grass
on the golf course.
And so I said, "I think that you really don't want roller
skates."
But in ways it was kind of sweet, the simplicity of life
and not realizing some things.
Another sweet moment was when we all made curtains. You
could always tell when people came to Liberia by their curtains.
People who came in the rainy season had bright curtains; people
who came in the sunny season had dark curtains. I used to sew
things, and I always had material left over. And David, who
worked for us, said, "Are you going to use that material?" So I
gave it to him. And one day, Dennis was up-country vaccinating
in a certain area. David's wife and children were in that area,
so he went along so that his children would definitely get
vaccinated. And they took a picture. And there were my bedroom
curtains-everybody was wearing them.
McNutt: Oh, my gosh.
Olsen: But I'm trying to think of some of the other social things we
did. I remember our going-away party. Usually when you invited
people for these cocktail parties, there were always so many
things to do that maybe only 50% would come. And just about the
time we were leaving the country, there was an outbreak of what
they thought was smallpox. It was way out in the hinterland,
where you had to hike in. It turned out to be monkeypox. But
Dennis and his replacement, Randy Moser and the team hiked in.
And so for our farewell party-and the Moser's welcome-to-
Liberia party-they were all still up-country. But Barbara Moser
and I were putting on this party, and everybody showed up. And
our house was just like they used to stuff Volkswagens: it was
just full of people. And about halfway into the party, Dennis
and Randy arrived in their Dodge truck.
One lady, as she was leaving, said to me, "That was a
really good cheese ball."
"Oh. Did you like it?"
She said, "Yes. My friend and I ate the whole thing. We
got stuck in the corner and we couldn't get out, so we would get
drinks from out the window, and we just ate the whole cheese
ball."
I think the thing that was nice about Africa is it gave
you a totally different perspective of the world and gave you a
wonderment for travel, for things you can do-or the things you
try to do anyway.
McNutt: So it's great to have that perspective in your early or middle
20s.
Olsen: Right, yes.
McNutt: Changes your whole outlook.
Olsen: Some of the people who are here at the reunion I have never met
before. They were in the first group in '66. We were kind of the
fill-in group, so we had a much smaller group. There were maybe
10 or 12 of us. So, except for meetings that were held about
once a year in someplace like Abidjan, we didn't meet the other
people because Africa was so remote that to get from one country
to the other you often would have to fly to France first.
McNutt: I've heard that. That's crazy.
Olsen: And, as opposed to India, where we traveled all over, Africa
was hard to travel in. But we had a lot of people from CDC come
through -and it was always fun people, like Jim Hicks [James W.
Hicks]. Then we would catch up on the news, because we were
never quite sure what was happening in the world. Bad news
travels fast though, so when Martin Luther King was killed, we
knew within hours of its happening; the same thing with Bobby
Kennedy. Like I said, bad news traveled very, very quickly.
And it was hard to convince Liberians that there was
actually a man on the Moon. That was happening while we were
there. The local people would say, "Oh, yes, Missy, oh, yes,
there's somebody on the Moon." But they had never flown; they
had never really been aware of so many things out there.
McNutt: It was 2 different worlds coming together.
Olsen: Right. But, then again, you don't have to be educated to be
smart, or to be wise. I think that all of us learned a lot from
the different people we encountered.
And at that time, since Liberia had a heavy American
influence, we would have a lot of American foods. We had 2
supermarkets, run by Lebanese. The Lebanese also were the
jewelers.
When I went into the supermarket, I would check the
cottage cheese to see if it was green or not. Or I would buy one
box of cereal and take it home, and if it didn't have weevils,
I'd go back and buy a whole bunch of boxes. But weevils and ants
were just everywhere, so we kept everything that wasn't canned
in the refrigerator. Even when I baked a cake, I took it out of
the oven and put it in the refrigerator. If you left it sitting
out for a little while, you'd come back and it would have ants
all over it. And if I made spaghetti, I had a strainer so that,
after it started boiling, I could scoop all the weevils off the
top. Otherwise, it would look like you had pepper in your
spaghetti.
Flour was the hardest thing. You had to sift your flour
because the weevils didn't go through the holes, and then you'd
throw them away and you'd make whatever you were going to with
the flour.
McNutt: What did you do for water?
Olsen: Originally, we were on a well. We had to boil the water and put
it through a filter. We had these big tall filters with clay
candles on them. Once a week, the filters would be boiled and
cleaned so that we always had water.
Now I was teaching school. One day I was taking a shower.
I was totally lathered, and the power went off. So the water
went off. So I called David, who brought me the water from the
dehumidifier and I poured that on. I still needed more water. So
then it was ice water from the refrigerator. So even to this
day, I wash my hair, rinse it off, wash one arm, rinse it off,
just in case.
McNutt: Tools of the trade.
Olsen: And after that day, we had a large plastic garbage can that we
always stored water in, and every couple of weeks we would
replace the water. [Toward the end of our tour, we were actually
on a water system, but we still boiled our water just as a
precaution.
We had excellent restaurants. Salvatore's had probably the
best Italian food I've ever eaten in my whole life because they
had to make everything from scratch. So they had their own
pasta, their own cannelloni. When I went to Italy, it was almost
anticlimactic because I had better food in Liberia. And eating
out was a very social thing. We ate out quite a bit.
There was also a Lebanese restaurant. And this is kind of
funny. They had an expansion, and the back area-again, you're
talking 100% humidity, 90°-100°F-was decorated like an ice cave,
with blown white plaster. You'd go back in there, and they'd
have air-conditioning blowing down. They made wonderful
hamburgers and shawarma sandwiches.
And since I worked at the school, some of the teachers
were from different neighborhoods. We had a Haitian French
teacher, and we had some Liberian teachers. It was a nice way to
get to know different nationalities and different people and
work with them.
McNutt: What did your family think about your taking off at age 25 for
Africa?
Olsen: Oh, I had already been to Brazil with the Peace Corps,. I grew
up in Wyoming and my first job was in Los Angeles, and I had
never been to California. Being the youngest of 7, I was a bit
of an adventurer.
McNutt: So what special training did you have? You mentioned training
at the CDC. What prepared you or your husband for West Africa?
Olsen: The participants all went through the EIS [Epidemic
Intelligence Service] course, so even though my husband is not a
doctor, he went through the course that's usually reserved for
the EIS Officers.
McNutt: Is that a 2-year course?
Olsen: No. It was a 3-month summer course. The EIS Officers who were
staying then worked with CDC for 2 years. But we went off to
Africa. So there was a lot of statistics and epidemiology, even
mechanics. The spouses were invited to attend any of the
sessions that we wanted to, which was quite interesting.
Plus they had another course, one taught by Dr. Waddy [B.
B. Waddy], who was very English and had spent many, many years
in Africa. He talked about tropical diseases and the African
culture. Other people talked about things like the weather. So
we had demographics, history, and geography.
But when we first arrived in Liberia, we had very, very
little because you were only allowed to carry 40 pounds of
materials with you. So we had a couple books and a few other
things. But then CDC sent some program materials, so, with
nothing else to read, I read the book on tropical medicine. And
one by one, you followed the pictures and would see the
diagnosis. And not being a doctor, I would think, "Oh, I've got
this rash." I think I needed something else to do.
I had a couple bouts of food poisoning. One was caused by
strawberries. They looked just like the kind of strawberries you
bought at the grocery store, but they had probably been frozen
and thawed a couple of times on their way to Africa.
They used to actually send California lettuce and
California celery to Liberia. It did not come by airplane; it
came by ship.
McNutt: And it made it?
Olsen: Yes. We would save the lettuce for special occasions. We had
these green Tupperware containers. If you took the core out of
the lettuce and put the lettuce in a paper towel, it would last.
I'm sure it had no food value, but it was like, "Oh, lettuce,
lettuce from the States!"
And the tsetse fly is in that part of Africa, so they
couldn't raise cattle because they would be killed by the tsetse
fly. So all the meat was imported. About the only thing you
would get locally was chicken.
McNutt: That answers a huge question for me because I did not see many
cattle when I was in Liberia in June, and I was wondering why
not.
Olsen: There is some other bug that gets into clothing that is washed.
The bug is in the water, and so you have to iron everything.
McNutt: Interesting.
Olsen: Yes. And at that time, there were parts of Liberia that were
not mapped, because the heat would cause steam to rise in the
rainforest. We had some friends who were with the USGS [US
Geological Survey]. They kept waiting for a clear day. But if
you look at the 1967 USGS map, there was a section of the
Liberia map , they probably have mapped the area by now because
of the satellites.
But I'll tell you about one of our regular activities.
Everybody wanted to have some African art. It was very "in" in
the States to have African art, and so people would buy
different things. There was a group of vendors or sellers, who
were called Charleys. So there would be Charley number 1,
Charley number 2, Charley number 3. And if you purchased
something from them, you could actually write check to "Charley
Number 3". Liberia used the US dollar. So I have cancelled
checks to Charley number so-and-so.
The Charley's must have had a great network. You would hear a
noise on your front porch, and then you'd hear the doorbell
ring. You would open the door, and there would be like a little
store. The Charley would have laid down all his artifacts, and
then you would look to see if there was anything you wanted.
They would often come on weekends when most people were at home,
and we would bargain and bargain. The Muslim Charley's, would
sometimes take a break and go say their prayers and come back,
and you would bargain some more. My husband didn't like to
bargain, so I would be out on the porch to bargain, and then I
would bring an artifact in the house and he'd, "Oh, that is so
ugly, I don't like it in our house!" and I would go bring it
back out and the price would be lowered.
One day, I started bargaining because I was bored and
there was nothing else to do. I was probably at maybe $10 and
the Charley was at $15, and after an hour we were going nowhere.
And then I decided I would use a different technique, and I
said, "Well, $7." And he looked at me and said, "Missy, $7, two
aspirin, you give me a headache." And I still have the artifact.
It looks like somebody made it out of mud. It's an interesting,
kind of strange piece.
One time, my husband was up-country. We had night
watchmen, so I felt perfectly safe. One of the Charleys that I
hadn't dealt with before came to the door. He had a fine Senefo
artifact. It was the only piece he had, and so I knew there
wasn't going to be a lot of bargaining. I think I probably ended
up spending $100 or maybe $125. It's a beautiful piece, and I
must get it into a museum someday.
But the next night the doorbell rings, and there he is
again, and he wants to buy it back from me for $250. So
evidently, somebody had heard about it and had offered him much
more. But I said, "No, no, no. It is sold."
McNutt: Someone within your group heard?
Olsen: One of his customers, because we would describe art pieces we
were interested in obtaining. The Charley would then try to find
them. .
If you had company, especially when anybody from the
States was visiting, the Charleys knew it. If you were having a
cocktail party, all of a sudden you would hear a ring, and there
would be tie-dye on the porch banisters and different Africa
items at their little store on the porch.
And then, sometimes rogues-they didn't call them burglars
in Liberia-came in at night. They never hurt anybody.
McNutt: While somebody was there?
Olsen: Yes. So at night, when you went to bed, you locked the front
door, the kitchen door, and every door in the house. You had
these big skeleton keys. Then you locked yourself in the
bedroom. And if you were lucky, you had a bathroom attached to
the bedroom, but if not, you locked the bathroom too. And off to
bed you went.
The first incident occurred the first time my husband was
out of the country. It was my first night alone in Africa and I
had locked myself in. I hear this tap-tap on the window, and I
think, "My goodness, somebody's coming in." Finally, I looked
out, and there was my husband throwing rocks at the window. He
had come back early, and when he rang the doorbell, it rang in
the kitchen, and I was 2 locked doors away.
McNutt: Your husband was trying to break in.
Olsen: Yeah.
But then one time I got up in the morning, went into the
kitchen, to turn the coffee on, and noticed that we had been
broken in. I ran out of the kitchen and locked the door, and I
said, "We've been robbed."
And Dennis said, "What did they take?"
I said, "The water filter."
And he said, "What?"
And I said, "They were in the kitchen. The only thing I
could see is that the water filter was gone and the window was
gone." (We had these sliding windows).
It was just before Thanksgiving, and the embassy had
brought in turkeys for us. So we had 3 turkeys in our kitchen
freezer, one for Dr. Thompson and his family and 2 for us. Well,
the rogues had taken 2 turkeys and a kitchen curtain to wrap
them in because they were frozen solid. That's all they took.
We all had tin roofs, and when it would rain, it was like
somebody playing the drums. We had the most exciting electrical
storms. There were big booms, and the power would go out. The
storms would come in off the ocean.
The robberies were timed. Just as the thunder boom
resounded, the rogues would take the window out. In our bedroom,
we slept with our heads against the wall. On the other side of
the wall was where the burglars had actually come in the house.
We didn't hear them at all.
We were in embassy housing. So Dennis went to the embassy
to report that we had been rogued. The burglars had gone through
the whole area; they had taken money; they had taken stereo
equipment. Dennis said he felt kind of strange saying they took
2 turkeys and the kitchen curtain. The robbers had tried to get
out of the kitchen, but they couldn't get the door open, so they
were confined to that little area.
McNutt: That's funny. So, security-wise, you weren't worried while you
were there.
Olsen: No. We were never in fear. I mean, there was just no concern.
McNutt: It was relatively stable out there?
Olsen: Very, very stable.
Again, you had a night guard. But you paid him, and I'm
sure he paid whoever it was that was stealing so they wouldn't
come and rogue you. I have a letter that a night guard wrote me.
He was a very old man. The letter said, "Dear Mother, please buy
me a bed so I can sleep on your couch while I guard. I might
have considered his request if he had called me Missy, but "Dear
Mother."
McNutt: What kind of problems did you have in establishing working
relationships with the African counterparts there?
Olsen: Well, I wasn't working, except at the school. I really didn't
have problems.
By that time, I could understand pidgeon English, and
usually they were a very kind and quiet people. Many times, the
little boys who played soccer with a grapefruit in the vacant
lot next door would come over to get a drink of water or just to
say hello. Or they would pick the papaya off my tree and then
want to sell it to me. But we never felt threatened at all. I'm
sure things have changed-the world has changed-but then it was
very nice.
They made beautiful tie-dye. I used to buy tie-dyed
material from the lady who lived under the bridge. Her name was
Mama Sony. I would take other American women to her. I think
sometimes people were reluctant to interact with local people
but I was very comfortable with them because I was teaching
Liberian children at school and working with Liberians. So it
was very natural.
At that time, there was a large international population,
too. There was the German store, and there was a large Irish
population, so we made many international friends. We would get
invited to their houses for dinner, and so we'd have all kinds
of different foods.
McNutt: So, what about your husband? Within the smallpox program, how
did he or the team work to get people to sign on to the program
and agree to being vaccinated? Did they have to go to tribal
leaders?
Olsen: They didn't have the kind of health systems then that they had
in some of the colonial countries. Oftentimes they would go to
the different villages. And all of his staff were Liberian. He
oversaw program operations, and Dr. Thompson was in charge of
the medical aspect. I don't know; he'll probably describe it.
But his office was incredible. It looked like it washed out to
sea and came back. His office was in an interior room, and
somebody had painted it a few years before, but when they
painted it, if there was a bookcase, they just painted around
the bookcase, so you could see where the furniture had been in
the past.
I remember one time he was really upset because, again, it
was really humid and really hot, and he had gone to the USAID
mission and asked if he could have an air-conditioner. And they
said, "No, that's a Liberian building, you can't have an air
conditioner, or everybody will want one." The statement that
was made was, "You have the benefit of working with local
people. Therefore, you should be able to cope with the local
conditions."
But he enjoyed working with the Liberian staff. Years
later, he went to Liberia on short-term consultancies. His staff
were still there and were very pleased to see him. He went up
country, where he found out that his driver was now a paramount
chief in one of the villages. On his way back, there was a pole
thrown across the highway, which meant stop. It was placed there
because John Masaquoi wanted to give him a present. He had this
country shirt. He stepped aside and said to Dennis, "Tell
Carolyn to wash it in Clorox; it's been under the bed."
We have only fond memories. We have things that probably
no longer exist. They made country money. Nimba Mountain had
such rich iron ore that they just pounded the iron ore into 6-
inch sticks with kind of a forked end and a round circle at the
top and twisted, unrefined iron; one piece of country money was
worth a penny.
Years later, I met somebody whose cousin had lived in
Liberia back in the Firestone days. She used to go into the
bush. In the afternoon, they would tell stories, so she made a
whole book of notes. After Liberia had all its problems, she
went back to her notes that she had taken in the '40s, and even
though she was in her 70s, she made a book on Liberian folk
tales. It is entitled, You Can't Unsneeze a Sneeze. And reading
those tales just brought back so many memories.
Food, for instance. They have one thing that's made out of
casava called dumb boy, and it is to make you feel full. And
you're a dumb boy if you don't swallow it quick because if you
chew on it, it swells in your mouth and you can't swallow it.
McNutt: That's interesting.
Olsen: And then you would eat it with just a little bit of what they
called soup, which is kind of like our chili.
McNutt: Wow. I love to hear these stories.
You said that you did a lot of work, and you spent a lot
of time with the locals as well as the expatriates. What was it
like coming back to the States? How did you fit in again?
Olsen: We came to Atlanta for about a month, and then Dennis was
assigned to San Francisco Bay area. One of the hardest things
was going back into the grocery stores, places where you had so
many options. You had a whole row of dog food. We had gotten so
used to having a limited amount. In Liberia, if the ship came
in, everybody knew that there was fresh or at least new
products.
I think the part that amazes me is when you return to the
states and you start to tell people about your experiences, and
suddenly their eyes glaze over. Then you realize that you are
now a part of a different group. If you really want to
communicate about travel or about experiences, you have to find
a new group of people who also have done similar things or who
are well-read. I find that people who are well-read oftentimes
enjoy the same interests.
The thing about reading or seeing movies of these areas,
be it Darfur or whatever, you don't get the heat and the smell.
And the heat and the smell are just as much a part of everything
as everything else.
I think it gives you an appreciation in the United States
of many things, but at the same time, it makes you realize that
you're fortunate and you need to give something back.
McNutt: What was the toughest problem you faced, and how did you handle
it?
Olsen: It must have been so tough, I put it out of my mind. I feel
like I had no problems.
Oh, I know. This is a funny problem, but it seemed
traumatic at the time. They didn't have parallel parking. You
pulled in. And a parking spot in front of the grocery store was
always prized. We had a little green Volkswagen, and I'd just
been to the grocery store. I was backing out. I looked and no
cars were coming; it was clear. And I backed up and I ran into a
car, a big black Mercedes.
McNutt: Oh no!
Olsen: And a lady came out. I could tell she was an honorable's wife.
I was in the middle of the main street, but all of a sudden, I
was totally surrounded by Liberians. Everybody was talking about
this great wreck. The woman was distressed. The policeman was
there. And I am the only white face in the crowd. All of a
sudden this very tall black man comes and puts his arm around me
and stands next to me. He was the husband of one of the
schoolteachers at the American School. Dennis was up-country,
and so I gave the woman my name and I told her we would have her
car fixed. What had happened was, she had passed my parking
spot, but her friend said, "Oh, there's somebody coming out," so
she backed up, and so she ran into me.
McNutt: She should have been looking for you.
Olsen: She should have been looking for me. So I was looking for
oncoming traffic, and she is backing up down the street. Bang! I
was so distressed. I went home and knitted. Whenever I'm
distressed, I knit, so I knitted. And when Dennis came back, I
said, "You've got to talk to Honorable so-and-so because I ran
into his wife's car."
Well, the honorable said, "Forget it. She was distressed
because she had just gotten it out of the shop from her last
wreck."
But, I mean, when you're suddenly surrounded, I mean, it's
scary.
McNutt: So you were glad that man was able to help you.
Olsen: Oh, yes, yes. He said he was driving down the street and he saw
this big crowd of people. When somebody sees a crowd, something
must be happening. He said, "And there you are in the middle of
it."
McNutt: So, back to smallpox, at what point did you think that smallpox
would actually be eradicated in Liberia and West Africa?
Olsen: Well, I have to tell you, I've never seen a case of smallpox.
As close as we came was toward the end, when they found a case
of monkeypox. It was the first time they had found monkeypox
transmitted to man, and the lesions looked like smallpox, but it
didn't manifest in the rest of the family. And so a lot of
people went up into that area. They would take a scab and send
it to CDC to be verified. So it was kind of like the show-and-
tell. But it was kind of an exciting time. But, like I said, I
never saw a single case of smallpox.
Evidently, somebody had come through and vaccinated the
people years before. Or perhaps, because of their isolation,
smallpox just never happened there.
But there was so much migration. People from other
countries moving in and moving out.
McNutt: The tribes aren't divided along country lines.
Olsen: No.
McNutt: So, had your husband seen smallpox there? He was more up-
country.
Olsen: Not in Liberia. He saw it in Sierra Leone. He went there short-
term.
One day we were driving. Our car hadn't arrived, so we
always took the taxis. And I said, "Dennis, look! I think I see
smallpox!" And here was this little kid sitting there by the
road. They have what they call the sandy society, and they have
mud stuck all over them, and it looked like some kind of
disease.
But taxis were interesting. The taxi drivers spoke in
pidgeon English. You could take a bus for 5 cents, or you could
take a taxi for 25 cents. But you would have to flag the taxis
down. Even the policemen didn't have police cars; they used
taxis. You would take a taxi up-country.
Our Peace Corps friends would go down to the taxi area to catch
a taxi up-country. One time the taxi driver was very aggressive.
His fare was inexpensive to take them all the way back up to
their village. They went with him, and the person in front was
not talking. About 5 miles out of Monrovia they realized the
passenger in the front was dead. The taxi driver was taking
him back to his village.
McNutt: Oh, my God.
Olsen: One night we had a group of Peace Corps people come to
visit. It was late, so we were going to take them back to where
they were living in Monrovia. We were going down the main
street; 4 of us were in the back of a Volkswagen, and 2 big guys
were up front. And all of a sudden this taxi pulls around and
tries to stop us. And pretty soon this taxi goes around us
again, yelling, "Stop in the name of the law!" So we pulled
over, and this policeman, who was drunk, comes to our car and
says, "You're under arrest! You have 2 people in the front, you
have 4 in the back. That's 7; that's too many." And he said,
"Follow me. I'm taking you to the police station." And we're
thinking, well, should we go or should we not because we had
always been instructed to go to the embassy.
The one fellow in the front with Dennis was Peace Corps,
and he was teaching law. He said, "I'd like to see this part of
the law." So we proceeded to the police station. It was
midnight. So Dennis and the arresting officer walk into the
police station. They have to wake up the policeman on duty.
So now the policeman and the arresting officer come out to
the car, and you can tell that this policeman is really tired.
He looks in the car and says, "Professor!" The policeman was
one of the lawyer's students. So policeman said to the arresting
officer, "Now, I know these people and they are okay, so we will
let them go." It's now like 12:30 AM. Just as we're leaving,
the officer who had tried to arrest us said, "Okay, I'll let you
go this time, but if I see you out after midnight, there'll be
no mercy."
Policemen also directed traffic. If they arrested you,
they would get in the car so that they could take them to the
police station.
But we had these little driver's licenses, little red
books. The people who work there for business had told us that
if we ever got stopped to just put a dollar in the license and
give it back, and they'd let us go. Well, I had one friend. She
was downtown, and this policeman started to give her a ticket,
and she had done nothing wrong. So she proceeded to give him the
riot act. He took her license and put a dollar in it and gave it
to her!
McNutt: How funny!
Olsen: But, again, you would go to the movie and you would always have
some young fellow watch your car. When you got out, you would
give him a quarter or 50 cents, and your car was safe. Your car
probably would have been safe anyway, but it's just the way that
they made some extra money.
But the movies were interesting because it was back when
they had reels. Sometimes you would see the middle reel, the
first reel, and then you had to try to figure out the movie. Or
they would have broken it and spliced it in backwards or
something. When we saw "Wait Until Dark," the opening scene
showed the plane backing into the airport port from the sky.
McNutt: Whoa! Is there anything from your experience or from the
program that you were involved with that you would change?
Olsen: Nothing I would change. It was such a wonderful opportunity. I
think that it is a shame that young people don't have that
opportunity now. You know, Peace Corps sometimes gives them an
opportunity. But, actually, they usually work at a grassroots
level, and this was more on the professional level.
The thing that was kind of amazing was that most of the
people in the smallpox program were probably 10-20 years younger
than their counterparts. They were all in their mid-20s or early
30s, and most of the doctors and people in Liberia that Dennis
worked with were probably in their 40s or 50s. On the social
level, it probably took us 2 years before we started getting
invited to Liberian houses.
When we were in India, it was much easier. In India, we
lived in what was basically an Indian house, and we would have
different people come to a party at our house, which was
probably not as good as what they lived in. So then when we
would be in their city or New Delhi, they did not feel
uncomfortable inviting us to their house. So that made it much
easier to interact.
But I think in Liberia, there was a status level that was
involved. Even though the salaries weren't that good and the
housing wasn't that good compared to stateside, they were still
better than what many people had.
When the power went out, we had a game we would play.
Whoever had the flashlight would have the almanac and ask
questions. The other entertainment, if it was light, was
watching the geckos.
But I think that we benefited because of the people who
went before us, in 1966. So I would say the training for the
group that went in '67 was good. The other thing is, Bill Foege
[William H. Foege] and the Thompsons had had to leave Nigeria,
because of the civil war, so they were at CDC during our
training and gave us first-hand experiences of what it was like.
And different people would tell you things to take to your post.
We were very spoiled as far as having American foods.
People who came to visit from Mauritania or Guinea would think
they'd died and gone to heaven because they could have dill
pickles and ice cream and all these things that you couldn't get
in other countries.
McNutt: So, how did participating with this project change your life?
Olsen: I would say that, being an environmental engineer, it gave me
more of a global view of the world, and also a real appreciation
for water , especially the needs of people for clean drinking
water. Unless you have lived in a situation where you really
have to plan what you're going to drink, you don't have that
same appreciation for water. And remember we lived in Africa
before bottled water. Nobody carried bottled water around, and
you didn't go to the store and buy a case of bottled water. So
you had to make sure that your water and your food were clean
and good. That was a challenge.
McNutt: And did this first experience contribute to later work
experience? You talked about India.
Olsen: Yes, India, and in my profession. I was a utility manager, and
I was on the board of American Water Works and Water for
People. Then I was the president of the nonprofit Water for
People. For the last group, I would talk to people, trying to
raise money for water projects.
And being a woman in a professional field, Africa was, to
some degree, a matriarchal type society, but in India you
realize how downtrodden women are. But in any society, it's the
women who end up carrying the water.
McNutt: And the little ones.
Olsen: The little ones, yes. And so it just gave me a real
appreciation, for different cultures. And to know that almost
everywhere you go, there are people who are wiser than you.
McNutt: So is there anything else that you want to add? Any words of
wisdom for the next generation of public health workers? I mean,
you've had so many nuggets already. Any last statements?
Olsen: I think that it is very good that we were able to see the world
and see the problems of the world. I think also that people need
to realize that there are problems here that are also very
trying, and we need to be aware of that. People really need to
know about health issues. Maybe we don't have the tropical
diseases, but we have the overweight and the diabetes and the
other things that affect that same socioeconomic group here.
Water and wastewater are my areas of special interest.
Global warming and cultural changes are going to see the
development public health problems that we don't even envision
yet.
McNutt: Thank you for your time.
Olsen: Thank you.
McNutt: What a wonderful discussion.
# # #
Carolyn Olsen Oral History
Carolyn Olsen interviewed by
Kathryn McNutt
July 14, 2006
Carolyn Olsen recalls life as an expatriate in Monrovia, Liberia in the period of 1966-1970 while her husband, Dennis Olsen, served as Operations Officer. Carolyn talks of taking a job as a teacher in Monrovia, expatriate social activities, and daily life living in Monrovia. Carolyn also briefly compares life with the smallpox program in Liberia to their later posting in India.
