Interview Transcript
This is an interview with Dorothy F. Hicks. The interview is being
conducted at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta,
Georgia, on July 14, 2006. It is a part of the 40th anniversary reunion of
the launching of the West Africa Smallpox Eradication Program. The
interviewer is Linda Harrar.
HARRAR: There's no such thing as a wrong answer here. If you don't like
the way you said something, just say, "Let me pick that up
again," and you can start your thought again. So don't worry;
it's not a high-pressure situation by any stretch of the
imagination.
May I call you Dot? Is that okay?
Hicks: Please do; all my friends do.
HARRAR: Okay, great. How did you and your husband came to be involved
with the smallpox eradication campaign?
Hicks: My husband was here as an employee of the Centers for Disease
Control but had been transferred to Raleigh, North Carolina. He
was Chief of Venereal Disease Control as a federal assignee to
the state of North Carolina.
We lived in the Raleigh area and didn't have children
after being married for quite a few years and decided we would
like to have a family. We progressed in adopting a little boy,
and Jimmy came to live with us at 8 months. And we had our order
in for a little girl, but Jimmy had to be 2 years of age before
we could adopt again, under the law in North Carolina.
Jim didn't come home for lunch each day. He stayed at the
office and went out with different people for lunch. And 1 day
he came home, and he walked in the house at lunchtime and I
said, "Are you feeling all right?"
And he said, "Yeah, I'm fine, but I think you'd better sit
down."
I said, "Why? Are we being transferred to New York or
Chicago?" because he knew those were 2 places where I had worked
at 1 time and did not want to go back to live.
And he said, "No." He said, "I've been asked to take a job
in West Africa."
And I said, "What are we going to do about the second
child? When do you have to go?"
He said, "Yesterday they wanted me there."
And I said, "Let me call Josephine Kirk," who was the
director, at that time, of the agency.
I said, "Josephine, we're supposed to get a little girl,
and Jim's being sent over to West Africa."
And she said, "Well, Dot, if you would take a boy, we've
got a precious little boy you could take."
And I said, "But we don't even have birth certificates yet
for Jimmy because he's not 2 yet."
And she said, "Well, we'll work something out."
And I said, "Well, Jimmy has asthma, and I don't know how
that's going to affect things."
And, of course, Jim told Dave Sencer [David J. Sencer],
who at the time was the Director of CDC, and he said that CDC
would get a waiver on it from Washington, which they did.
Jim left, and I was there until the house was sold, and
then he came back to go over with us. So that was how we wound
up in Lagos, Nigeria.
HARRAR: Okay. And what were your first impressions when you arrived in
Lagos with 2 children in . . .
Hicks: In diapers. We came in from Switzerland, where it was snowing.
When we arrived at the airport, they actually told us on the
plane that it was very hot, and we, of course, had winter
clothes on. When we deplaned, it wasn't like any airport here.
It was like airports used to be in this country, where you had
to deplane out on the tarmac and walk in. And as we walked in,
there were guards with guns, and you had to walk through them to
go into their security, and I wasn't used to that, of course. It
wasn't 9/11 yet, so we weren't used to this kind of security.
And we got through security, and they had a car waiting to
take us to a residence, which I had never seen. I had no idea
where we would be going. And I was amazed, as we left the
airport to head to Lagos. There were no streetlights, very few
paved roads. But along the roads there were little stands that
people obviously had made, and the only light was candlelight to
sell their wares. So that was my first impression.
I was a bit apprehensive about where we were going to be
living. What are we going to be living in? I didn't know whether
it was a thatched hut or what it was going to be. But when we
drove in, it was a compound. The housing had been provided by
the government, and it turned out to be a very nice home.
Our only concern when we arrived is that we had been told
by 1 of the physicians here who had been over there that they
were concerned about having the 2 boys because the stairs were
different than any stairs that we have here. They didn't have
backing to the stairs, and with the children that small, they
were concerned about when they started to crawl and get around.
But we never worried, never had any problem with it. We were
there when they were going up and down the stairs. And just
things like that.
But it was a very nice compound, the housing that was
provided, and the furniture was provided. By the guidelines, you
had to hire locals to work for you while you were there. They
had secured a nanny for us, a cook, and since cooks do not clean
the house, we had a houseboy to clean.
And then, like dumb Americans going into that kind of an
environment, we, in our sea freight, sent over a lawnmower. But
we found out, when it arrived, that that's not what they use
over there. They use machetes to cut the grass. It was little
things like this.
But I thank God that we had a chance to see another
culture.
HARRAR: I imagine you learned some things and had some experiences that
you will just never, ever forget.
How did you find the people of Nigeria? Were they
welcoming to you?
Hicks: Very friendly.
They had guards. You know, we were there during the
Biafran War with the Eastern Region, the oil region of Nigeria,
and the military capital was in Lagos. The American wives and
children were given the opportunity to evacuate, but we could
not come back. And we chose, as a family, to be together, even
though Jim was traveling throughout the entire 19 countries, I
believe it was. It may have been 20; I don't remember. And it
was an experience then that I hadn't expected.
HARRAR: What would you say the impact of this experience was on your
family, on the boys growing up, and on your own view of the
world?
Hicks: My view of the world is that we don't know how fortunate we
are. I wish I could convey that to people. And when people are
poor in this country, I haven't seen anything in this country,
as many places as we've lived, that would be anything like
living in an environment like that. When you see children that
are sold from 1 client to another to work, and they'd come to
our backdoor in the morning carrying loaves of bread, little
tiny loaves, to sell. Precious children. And children with
swollen bellies, that you thought, "Boy, that child had too much
to eat," and then you'd find out that it wasn't that they had
too much to eat, they weren't getting enough to eat. It's hard
to convey to somebody.
HARRAR: It kind of breaks your heart, I'm sure.
Hicks: It does.
HARRAR: Especially when you're raising children of the same age.
Hicks: Yes. But both of our sons now really don't remember anything
because Jimmy became very ill with his asthma overseas, after we
were there for 2 years, and had been hospitalized over there
around 20 or 22 times. Jim was out of Nigeria, in 1 of the other
countries, and they sent a cable and told him to come back
because they didn't think Jimmy was going to make it, and they
decided to send us home.
HARRAR: It must have taken a lot of courage for you to be the mother
and try to hold down the fort at home while this was happening
and your husband was traveling.
Hicks: So we were there about 2 years, going on 3 years, before we
left. And we couldn't come straight home by plane. They wanted
us to stop in major cities in case Jimmy had an attack.
He's now 42 years of age and is a chemical engineer with
Solvay. And why he chose to take chemical engineering, I don't
know, but he's in polymers. So he says, "Mom, we develop it on
the computer, and if it explodes, we don't do it." But it's
things like this.
HARRAR: Do you remember how you felt when it was announced that
smallpox had been eradicated?
Hicks: Elated, absolutely! Jim continued to work in smallpox from here
and would leave and go over for 6 weeks at a time and that sort
of thing. But it was an experience that I'm thankful we were
able to have.
HARRAR: And did you see values in Nigeria maybe that you thought were
powerful, whether it's family . . .
Hicks: Absolutely family. The mothers, if they can afford to do it,
keep their children, and they try to take care of them. They
would feed the children before feeding themselves. You see
little children laughing, and they don't realize what the
situation is. They're not used to having a plate full of food.
And I can remember my dad telling me, when I was growing up,
that "you have to clean that plate now. There are a lot of poor
people in the world." Well, we were poor, but I didn't know it
until I grew up. You know, when you get to be in your 70s, you
remember those days.
HARRAR: And do you think that this experience really shaped your
husband's career and his work that he did thereafter?
Hicks: Oh, yes, absolutely. He'd been with CDC, was hired from Tampa
Health Department after graduating from-am I allowed to say he's
a Gator?
HARRAR: Sure, go Gators!
And you yourself, did you ever work outside the home?
Hicks: I was teaching the Nigerian police, equestrian arts. For years,
I showed hunters and jumpers and 3- and 5-gaited saddle horses.
I was going to market 1 day with the boys, and I saw this
Nigerian police officer-this is one of the things you may want
to edit out-he had dismounted from his horse, had urinated, and
couldn't get back on the horse again.
So I stopped the car and went over to him, and I said, "I
could make that easy for you."
And he said, "How?"
And I said, "You lower the stirrup." And so I showed him
how to lower the stirrup and how to put his foot in it, and gave
him a boost up. I was a lot smaller than him, but he got up. And
so the police asked me if I would help them with training, and I
was doing that. They have a polo ground in Lagos.,
We actually lived on the island of Akoya, which is
connected by a very small bridge. You don't even realize that
it's an island until you go over the little bridge and wonder
what it's doing there. You think it's a drainage ditch.
I was amazed at the fact that the sewage consists of open
sewers. Before you could go into your own home, as a precaution,
you would take your shoes off and wash your feet at the door.
You just didn't go in and out when you were down in that area.
There was water there, and we wound up with a boat. We
used to take the boys out to this little island that the embassy
had. We'd take them to a hotel that they had, and it had a
little pond. The children would push their little sailboats
around that. And we'd have high tea in the afternoon on Sunday.
We were Christians, and we were fortunate enough, when we
went over, to go to the First Baptist Church of Lagos with our
sons. The first Sunday we were there, the service was in the
Yorba tongue, and we knew the music, but it was sung in Yorba. I
said to Jim as we were leaving, "Gosh, our sons will never
understand the language, and we certainly don't understand it."
Having said that, a couple walked up to us. Quite
honestly, I thought we were the only white people in there, but
there was another couple, an older couple, who came over and
introduced themselves. They had been sent over by the Southern
Baptist Convention as missionaries and had been in Africa for
many years. And we found out that their residence was just
around the corner from our house. So they became grandparents to
our children while they were there.
We mentioned to them that our children would never
understand the sermon or the Bible. We read the Bible to them,
but they needed to do something.
And she said, "Well, do you think you-all would be
interested in trying to help to formulate an English-speaking
church here?"
And we said, "Yes, of course."
And, to make a long story short, we were able to do that.
We didn't have a preacher every Sunday, so Jim would take 1
Sunday, and then there was another couple from Gulf Arabian
American Oil who were Baptists, and they came, and he would
preach 1 Sunday. And then there was a Nigerian man who was part
of the Southern Baptist Convention but African, and he traveled
in Nigeria from 1 place to another to do services, so he wasn't
always there. Before we left, they had received enough money
that we were in a school on Sunday mornings. A lot of the
Nigerian young men who were in university chose to come to the
English-speaking church because most of them had learned English
when they were out of country, in the U.K. or in the United
States, and they wanted to continue the language.
HARRAR: Did you feel isolated when you were there? I mean, I know it
was very tough in those years to-you couldn't call home easily.
Hicks: No. You had to make an appointment to call home. As a matter of
fact, when I was there, I received a wire through the embassy
that my grandfather had passed away. It was during the Biafran
situation. If I had left the country, I could not come back. And
by the time I got the message, he was already buried, but I
found that out only because I had made an appointment to make a
long-distance call. And when I finally got through to my
parents, he was already buried. So that was one of the factors.
The children reached the point that, when we came back to
the States, they were speaking some of the Yorba tongue. The
worst part of it was our help were not all of the same tribe,
and there were 3 different dialects spoken in our house, not
including English.
HARRAR: Were you concerned that the children, aside from the asthma,
would be affected by illnesses over there? Did your family, you
or your husband, ever become ill?
Hicks: No, not at all. We had a physician at the embassy. I couldn't
find him at the time that Jimmy went code blue, but one of our
own physicians, Dr. Stan Foster, I called his residence, and the
help said that he was out playing tennis. And I said, "Can you
get a message to him that I need help?" Jim was out of country
at the time. And Stan was a lifesaver to us to get us over. He
tried to work with Jimmy at home for a short time and saw that
it wasn't going to work, so he drove. And, of course, because of
the war, we were stopped by soldiers for security who wanted to
go through the car and all that, and Stan was able to get
through to them that this was an emergency and we had to get
Jimmy to the hospital. So I'm thankful for that.
HARRAR: Well, that was quite an experience.
I think we're all set. Thank you so much. It's really a
great honor to meet you.
# # #
Dorothy Hicks Oral History
Dorothy Hicks interviewed by
Linda Harrar
July 14, 2006
Dorothy (Dot) Hicks was in Lagos, Nigeria with her husband Jim, who was the Regional Administrative Officer for the Smallpox Eradication Program. She recounts family problems as an expatriate wife. These included attempts to medically evacuate a son. Dot also relates humorous situations that often occur while living in a different culture.
Information regarding the reproduction and use of this resource may be obtained by contacting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of the General Counsel, 1600 Clifton Road N.E., Mailstop D-53, Atlanta, GA 30329, USA. Phone: 404-639-7200. Fax: 404-639-7351
