Interview Transcript
INTERVIEW
Audio File: Tim Miner Audio File
Transcribed: January 28, 2009
Interviewer: My name is Ted Tolavoil. I'm a senior undergraduate at
Emory University. We are at the CDC today interviewing Tim Miner and
today's date is April 2nd, 2008 and the interviewee has given
permission for this taping. First of all Tim if I could have you
introduce yourself. Who are you and tell me a little bit about your
background?
Interviewee: Okay. My name is Howard Gordon Miner but I go by the
nickname Tim and I've had that nickname from birth because when I was
born there were already two other Howards in the family and they
needed something to differentiate me from the rest of the Howards so I
got the moniker Tim. I grew up in Detroit Michigan and left in
nineteen seventy. I taught for a couple of years in the inner city in
Detroit. I went to Swaziland in the peace corps in nineteen seventy
and I'd just like to say [Foreign Dialect] which is Siswati for I'm
very happy to see you now. So, I do recall some of the languages that
I picked up along the way. I taught in Swaziland for a year until I
discovered that we were taking jobs away from unemployed Swazi
teachers so I mentioned to my peace corps director at the time I would
like to go and do something else. I wasn't real enamored with
teaching anyway and I certainly didn't want to un-employ a Swazi
teacher.
So because I spoke French they sent me to Zaire with the smallpox
eradication program but they almost sent me to Morocco as an
agricultural photographer so I could be in a whole different career by
now if had I not gone to Zaire. In Zaire the smallpox program was
headed by Dr. Pierre Ziegler and when I landed in Kinshasa I went
first to the peace corps office and signed in and did all the
paperwork and met all the people. And then went over to the WHO
office in Kinshasa and had this lengthy conversation in French with
Dr. Ziegler and I realized that I really needed to get up to speed on
my French rather quickly. And so I did and he showed me how to give
an immunization and he had a clinic there once a week.
So there was a lady that came in and you know you have the bifurcated
needle and you take the arm and kind of squeeze the flesh and rest
your wrist on the arm and you just jab it a couple of times. So he
said, "Why are you doing that? Tell me exactly what you're doing so
that I know that you understand what I told you." So, I'm giving her
the immunization and you're supposed to just prick the skin a little
bit until there is a trace of blood. Well for those who speak French,
the word for blood and the word for monkeys sound about the same. So
as I was explaining what I was doing I said, "You just prick the skin
until you see a trace monkeys." And everybody just broke out laughing
because they couldn't understand why and the lady wondered what kind
of vaccination I was giving here that she'd get a trace of monkeys on
her skin. So, that was my introduction to the immunization program
there.
I went to my field station which was then in northern Shaba, ex-
Katanga Province and there was another peace corps volunteer there,
Ken Bloom. And so we did a [inaudible 03.39] in the field first and
then came back and then he left and left me there but I'm getting a
little bit ahead of myself. While I was in Kinshasa with Dr. Ziegler
he said, "All right you're peace corps volunteer but we don't want you
to conduct yourself as a volunteer, tell anybody that you're a
volunteer or live like a volunteer." I don't know what his
preconceptions of volunteers were but I listened intently. And he
said, "To make sure you don't live like a volunteer we're going to
supplement your $75 a month income from the peace corps with an
additional $400 from WHO." I said, "Works for me," so went out there
in the field and took my station.
I had three Land Rovers, an office, a furnished two bedroom apartment
and a staff of four. So I was the [inaudible 04.35] to keep the team
leader of a epidemiological investigation team and we were in the
field about twenty eight days a month, back at the home base only two
days a month because I like to travel and be in the field and there
wasn't a lot to do at home base. And my African staff liked to be
gone more so that they could be making money and they wouldn't be home
spending it and having relatives come around and so and so forth as it
was explained to me. So we were in town maybe two days to file a
report and I had a two way radio so I could talk to Kinshasa. And
there was Mr. Ali an Egyptian that ran the radio and I was talking to
him and I said needed this piece of equipment to repair a Land Rover.
And he said, "But what is it?" And I said, "Well I know what it is in
French." I'd been so immersed in French I forgot, even though I grew
up in Detroit, what this particular part was. And so I said, "Well
I'll tell you in French and if you know what it is, you tell me what
it is in English because I forgotten." So, he did that and we got the
parts and went on.
I was in Zaire at a particularly historical moment when Mobutu Sese
Seko wa za Banga, the president of Zaire at the time was just
initiating his authenticité campaign. So he renamed the Congo River
the Zaire River, renamed the country Zaire, renamed the currency Zaire
and told all Zairewa's, all citizens that they had to change their
names from Christian names to African names. So I talked to my team
and I said well - after I learned all their names I said, "Well you're
going to have to tell me what you're African name is and then tell me
whether you - how you want me to address you." And so that worked out
fine. That wasn't a problem. When it came time for me to leave, when
I went to Zaire I had to give another year to peace corps. Normally
it's two years but since I had done one in Swaziland I went to Zaire
for two years and part of the way through that I got home leave and I
went to Geneva. And on a Sunday afternoon I went to the WHO
headquarters and walked into D. A. Henderson's office and he was there
on a Sunday afternoon. And I said, "Well D.A. I'd like - you know I've
done this work in Zaire, I'd like to have a job. I'm going to be
leaving the peace corps, I'd like to have a job with WHO if you think
that's possible in another country." And he said, "Well, I'll look
into it."
Four weeks later I got back to Kinshasa and I was offered a job with
WHO in Bangladesh but I had to go back to my post and turn over all
the operations to the African staff at the time which I enjoyed doing
because they were certainly capable of doing everything that I did.
And it became a philosophy of mine in working in a host country to
always whenever possible to have a host country counterpart working
with me. And try to - I would try to build as much infrastructure or
leave more than what I came with and that has been one of my standards
that I've had. So I left the post, went to Kinshasa to visit peace
corps and I couldn't find the office. The office had changed
locations. So I found the office, walked into the office and they
weren't the same people that were there. So I said - introduced who I
was and said I'm ready to check out and that time John McEnany who I
think also has done some work in smallpox was there and he said, "Oh
yes, Tim Miner. I think I've seen your name somewhere. Where have
you been? You've been gone for about two years." So all the staff,
the office, everything had changed, all the people so we signed out of
there and I headed off to Zaire via Nairobi - to Bangladesh via
Nairobi.
In Bangladesh, let me see, I - let me back up a little bit and tell
you a brief story in Zaire about an immunization campaign. We used
(pedajets) but we also used the bifurcated needles. Because the city
of Kalemie on Lake Tanganyika was bordered on a rebel occupied area
and we had some reports of smallpox in there but we really couldn't go
into that area to investigate, what we decided to do, Ken Bloom and I
was to hold a mass immunization campaign in that town or a little bit
outside of town with the hopes that the people from that area would
come in and be immunized. So that was my first mass vaccination
campaign and we called Kinshasa and had them send us immunization
certificates and some additional (pedajets) and vaccines and things
and we held a mass campaign and that was really exciting because we
had - the local person said everybody should come and you will get a
certificate and they may be checking people to make sure that they had
a certificate, that they had an immunization.
So we had large crowds of people and we had to spread this out over
about ten days to get everybody vaccinated but that was - that was a
pretty exciting thing. And there's another city we visited on Lake
Tanganyika and it was a mission there and I tried to stay at the
missions because they had the best food, the best accommodations and a
variety of beverages and the best conversation that was available at
that time and if I were to fall ill I'd been in pretty good hands
because there's nurses nearby and so on. At this one mission there
was a Belgian Father, actually he was a German Father and he tanned
hides. So I said well can you make me some shoes because my store
bought American shoes didn't last very long and were getting kind of
threadbare. He said sure. So I had him make a pair of boots a year
for me and that's about how long they lasted but there was also - he
tanned some other hides. I bought, and this was before
environmentalists and so on and so forth so I had an alligator hide, a
python skin that was probably about thirty feet long and a puff adder.
And I sent those home to the States where my nieces and nephews used
them as show and tell in schools and they were a big hit.
So I'm back in - headed for Bangladesh now and I'm in Nairobi, through
Nairobi to New Delhi and got an orientation in New Delhi and then went
to Bangladesh. When I arrived in Bangladesh Stan Foster was there,
Stan Music was there, Neilton Arnt from - Stan Foster and Music are
from CDC, Nielton was Brazilian with WHO. Nick Ward, Dr. Ward is a
physician from U.K. and then there was myself and I was the youngest,
only non physician and I was the only one that wasn't married. So
guess where I ended up working in Bangladesh? The most remote river
line areas of the country. I had Barisal, Patuakhali and Faridpur and
there was a hospital ship that the Germans had donated to Bangladesh a
couple of years before I arrived and Stan had arranged for a bunch of
-- they were moped like or vespa like Honda -- motor scooters to be
put on all over the deck. And he said, "I want you to get on that
boat and go down there and eradicate smallpox from those three
provinces down there. I said, "Is that all? Any other instructions?"
And so I did, got on the boat, introduced myself to the captain and I
was able to supplement the pay of the crew nominally, nominally for
the extra expenses I incurred and what they did.
And so we towed a speedboat. This was - this ship was probably forty
five, fifty feet long and had a draught of about three feet,
three/four feet. It was fairly shallow and I had a forward cabin. And
we had our immunization team on there and we went down to Barisal
first and docked and stayed at a mission there for a couple of days.
Met with the chief medical officers and then went on down to Faridpur.
I taught my self Bengali, smallpox Bengali and to this day when I
speak with Bengalis I meet in Atlanta and elsewhere I've been informed
that I speak sort of like a villager or a fisher person not like a
university professor which is fine because those are the people with
whom I communicated all the time and didn't have any problems doing
that. I was able to conduct a smallpox investigation by using my
Bengali. All right an interesting - our team was made up of myself
and we had a combination of Muslim and Hindu staff on the team.
Vaccinators and interpreters and there was a chief and so on and
everybody got along fine and it was just a wonderful experience. We
had a speedboat driver as well and so we would get down in the morning
into the speedboat and go off and investigate the reports that we had.
And one time we were coming back rather late at night and there was a
full moon and we were in the Brahmaputra which is the main river in
Bangladesh. Then the river line areas there are a lot of channels and
we were out in the main river and we were going rather fast. And the
next thing we knew we were out of the boat, head over heels in the
river but we weren't in the water. We had hit was is called a mud
flab and in a mud - when the - you have a mud flab in the water and
you can't tell because the water is just barely over the mud and the
mud in the dark or in the moonlight reflects - seems to be water. So
we hit that and the motor went up and all of us were thrown out of the
boat in the middle of the river on this mud flab, covered in mud and
when we got - regained our senses we were just laughing hysterically
at the absurdity of the situation. We put our stuff back in the boat
and pushed off and got back to the speed boat.
One particular investigation that stands out to me is I went to a
village and the villagers - this young man and some other people took
me to this brand new hut. I mean it was just brand new, it had just
been built and they said the patient is in there. And they led me
inside and on the mat on the floor -- there was no furniture or
anything else, there was just this mat on the floor in the middle of
the hut -- was a person under a cover, a cloth, completely covered.
And I was prepared to take the cover off and examine and see if it's
smallpox and they just - they took the whole cover off themselves and
there was this young woman covered with smallpox from head to toe of
the confluent. There wasn't a space on this person that there wasn't
a pox and so I knew right away what it was and thanked them and
stepped out. And this young man starts explaining to me that this is
his new wife, his new bride. And I said, "Gosh I feel very badly
about that. I know that vaccinators had been in this village before
would you - how come she wasn't vaccinated?" Was she away or
something?" He said, "No." He said, "I hid her from the vaccinators
because I didn't want her to have a smallpox scar on her skin." I
said, "Oh I see." And you can't be judgmental or demonstrable,
demonstrative or emotional at times like that. You have to really
kind of step back emotionally a little bit from that. So I said "Well
what would you do differently?" He said, "Well, I'm looking for
another wife and my next wife will be vaccinated."
But what struck me was that it was preventable and here was this young
person, a young woman in just the beginning of her life with so much
in front of her to look forward to, to being a mother, a grandmother,
a husband, a sister and so on. And her life ended in such a tragic
way. So I had several of these reminders throughout Bangladesh. I
might add also that while working in Zaire I hadn't actually seen a
real case of smallpox. It had been eradicated but we were monitoring
it at the time. So Bangladesh was the first time that I had seen live
smallpox and...
Interviewer: What was your first impression when you arrived in
Bangladesh?
Interviewee: Well, when I arrived in Bangladesh and the subcontinent, I
was impressed by the density of population. I had never seen, apart
from a market in Africa, I had never seen so many people. I once did
an experiment driving on the road trying to count ten seconds, just
one and two and - up to the number ten, looking out the side of my
window to see if there was ever any space where there wasn't evidence
of human beings being there. So the land was either occupied by a
house or a structure of some kind or it was planted. That was it.
There was no vacant land, no land in Bangladesh that was not touched
by human hands. We also because of the density when I was there, we
had confined a lot of the smallpox cases and isolated them and we were
in the process of eradicating them when the government tore down the
basties or the slums of Dhaka. Just went in with bulldozers and it
acted as a centrifuge spinning out cases of smallpox all over the
country reintroducing smallpox into areas that had recently been freed
of the cases. So that - our numbers of cases went sky rocketing again
so that it was little disheartening.
Another time I was down in the river line areas and Stan Foster was
up in Dhaka and I think I was at the furthest most remote place at the
time on the ship and I got on the radio and talked to Stan. And what
we were trained to do was to investigate the cases of smallpox and
find out who had been visiting and what were there names and where did
they go and where did they live and so on and so forth. So as a
matter of routine I gave Stan this information about who this person
was and the name and when they visited and so and so forth and not
really expecting that you know all these millions and millions he's
going to find him but he did. He went to the address and he asked for
the person and he found the person and immunized the person and was
able to prevent the next generation of smallpox from that person
having visited there. So anything is possible.
We lived with the people in the host country. I lived on the ship, I
lived with Bengalis all the time, I rarely saw another European.
There was some care people that I would meet on occasion but I learned
the language and the culture and they embraced me and I embraced them
figuratively and it just worked very well. And I can't imagine
eradicating smallpox with a kind of a visit and come out and then
visit and come out type of approach. It didn't occur to me to do it
any other way other than to go to a respective country and live there
and work there and learn about the people and the culture and the
religion and so on. I worked for six months in the river line areas
on the hospital ship and was fairly able to get smallpox under control
there. And then I was transferred to the north, Jamalpur and went
from a boat to a motorcycle and that's when I met after I'd been
working up there getting things organized, I met Steven Jones. Dr.
Jones was up there and Marty Litz and Peter Hargrove and these are
people I met and known since then. And we had people come from CDC, a
lot of consultants as well, short term consultants for three months or
six month stints.
And I was having breakfast with one of the fellows and it usually
consists of a chapatti and some eggs or something like that. And he
said, "Well how do you manage with all of these poor raggedy kids and
poor people and people kind of on their last leg and they look very
unhealthy." And I said, "Yes I never know when I walk past someone
coming back in the afternoon whether they'll be alive or dead," and
that has happened many times. And I said, "Well you know, it's not
that I'm unsympathetic or that I don't care but I know well enough
that I can do one of two things. I can either devote my life to
trying to alleviate the pain and the suffering and feeding and
clothing of less fortunate people or I can do my job and eradicate -
working to eradicate smallpox and that will benefit them. At least
they won't die of smallpox." Well since then I've learned that
Bangladesh has done quite well economically. Many of the clothes that
I buy today are made in Bangladesh that weren't made in Bangladesh at
the time and I understand that they are doing much better than when I
was there at the time. So that's heartening to know.
Interviewer2: In the book that's been written about smallpox in India,
the author postulates that the only reason that smallpox was
eradicated was by compulsion.
Interviewee: Yeah. Smallpox could not have been eradicated by
compulsion. People all over the world cannot be coerced for long to
do something that they don't want to do themselves, that they don't
want to do willingly. And I relied on reason and understanding and
cultural sensitivity when explaining the benefits of immunizations and
if somebody that chose not to then so be it. I felt very disappointed
because I knew the preventive benefits of that but nobody was ever
forced. And I had people approach me afterwards as I was leaving and
say, "Come we've decided we want you to do some immunizing." We also
out of respect for a variety of cultures engaged female vaccinators
and that worked very well and so that we were able to honor the
customs of the country and have ladies vaccinate ladies and so I think
we did much better that way. But in Zaire and in Bangladesh and in
Somalia where I worked there was never any thought of coercing people.
Governments may issue declarations that there's a smallpox
vaccination day or you should immunized for smallpox and so on but
even when we were doing the mass campaign and there were police
officials organizing the lines of people, there was nobody - they were
there voluntarily and they recognized the benefits of the immunization
as opposed to having the disease. So that's an important point to
clarify.
And by way of this tape I want to thank all of the host country
nationals that have kept me safe over the years and to this day when I
travel overseas. They're very protective and solicitous and very good
people to be working with and I did not eradicate smallpox. I worked
with hundreds, hundreds or thousands of Bengalis and Zairewa's and
Somalis to do that and so it is - it's to their credit. They're the
ones that are responsible for our success because if you show
sensitivity and you show honesty and a true spirit, they'll go with
you anywhere, any time, day or night, seven days a week to carry out
the work. So this is something that I want the people that will view
this tape in the future to know. That this was truly a global effort
of people all over the world coming together for this - for this one
cause and I don't think there had - apart from World Wars and even in
World Wars there wasn't all the countries coming together. Some were
in conflict but in this particular case to achieve the eradication of
smallpox it's the first time in human history that a disease has been
eradicated by human beings. That human beings have rid themselves of
this pest that goes back to recorded history. And so I really would
like to see something like that happen again because it's - they were
really heady days and really wonderful, wonderful things to
experience.
After I finished in the northern in Bangladesh in the motorcycle,
last six months I came down to Dhaka to be the finance officer and we
had as many as seventy five or a hundred short term volunteers in
Bangladesh at one time and everybody had to have money and everybody
had to have a system of accounting for it. So based on my year and a
half and handling and accounting of money I developed a spreadsheet.
Now, we call it a spreadsheet but we didn't have Excel at that time.
You had to draw something by hand and then had people look at it and
review it and then it went to the printer and then they sent you a
proof and then you looked at that to make sure it was all right
because they were going to print a million copies of it so it better
be right. And so I developed this spreadsheet about yea big and
people would put a carbon paper. That's a - not too many people know
what that is but anyway it allows you to write down one side of the
paper and it will come through on the next page. So that's what we
used and I was in charge of training the volunteers, the short term
consultants that come in to account for this system. Very simple
system. You get a receipt, make sure it has the date, write down what
it was and put the number in sequence of what it was and put that
number on your spreadsheet and just write down what it was and your
beginning balance and then you're ending balance. That's all you have
to do nothing more than that. And we gave them a briefcase of money
and - of taka and they went off.
And while we had these people out there with their briefcases full of
money containing smallpox and what not, the government decided to have
a demonetization effort. And they demonetized all the money and said
all the money had to be returned to the bank and they'd give you a
receipt for it because they're going to issue new currency. Well
needless to say that put our campaign in a bit of a bind because
people then couldn't get paid and so on. So our people had to go to
the banks wherever they were in the field, turn in the money, get a
receipt and we got a special dispensation from the president of the
country and the head of the treasury that said we would be given -
among the first ones to be given the new currency as soon as we turned
in the old money so that we could keep the campaign going. So there
were little exciting moments like this that happened from time to time
and we were working with nationalities. All nationalities were
involved and as you know the Americans and the Russians and I forget
if it was originally the Russians idea and the Americans joined it or
what it was but we got WHO to accept this program. And so in
Bangladesh we were working occasionally with Russians and they liked
our cigarettes and we liked their vodka so we'd you know trade and
that stuff but they thought that were working for the CIA and we knew
they were working for the KGB. I mean there just wasn't any way
they'd be let out of the country if they weren't. None of us were CIA
but you know you couldn't change their mind on that.
So we worked with a lot of different nationalities and one character
in particular stands out, Dr. Larry Brilliant. And he's a physician
from Detroit and went to study with a guru in India and the guru said,
"You're going to eradicate smallpox from India. You're going to join
the smallpox eradication program,." and he went to D.A. and said, "I
need a job." And the Nicole Grasset who's a French woman physician
who headed the regional office of smallpox campaign in Delhi said, "No
we really don't have anything for you." Went back to the guru and the
guru said go back. Anyway he ended up working in the smallpox
eradication program and was instrumental with others in getting Tata
Industries to put in money and to organize their workers and have -
support eradication efforts there. Now Tata Industries as you know
just bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Company so gives you
an idea of how the world has changed.
When I left Bangladesh I had decided that I needed - global public
health was the love of my life. It was what I felt I was born to do.
I wasn't going back to teaching. I really couldn't do anything else
after having done something this exciting so I went back to Michigan
via Asia and signed up at the University of Michigan School of Public
Health to do an MPH. Well, who should I find there but Larry
Brilliant as my academic advisor and Steve Jones is a student there as
well. So I tell you, you just can't get away from these people. But
I had to delay my admission to the University of Michigan. I had to
call them up and said, "Well I have to go to the Cameroon." Stan
Foster wanted me to go to Cameroon to do an assessment of the whole
country's health system for the program that was to follow on from
smallpox campaign which was the expanded program on immunization. So
I designed a questionnaire, visited the whole country, every health
facility in the whole country and left the report there and then went
back to the University of Michigan to start my degree.
While I was there I met Dave Hayman who was assigned there and he was
taking over after Bernie Gayer that had left. And so I talked a
little bit with Dave and showed him the report and he thanked me and
we went off. And two years later, I forget what country I was in,
maybe I was in the Philippines at the time, I got this note from David
Hayman thanking me for this report. That it was so comprehensive that
it has been the principal reference document for them in establishing
their expanded program on immunization. And again that was made
possible by traveling and working with and the support of the
Cameroonians. I had a small staff and a driver that we went around to
do that. That it's nothing I did by myself. So it's good to know
that what you do, do works out quite well.
Okay. A little bit about smallpox in Somalia. I was at the
University of Michigan and Michigan liked the idea of a student coming
in with the experience that I had and in the summer times working as a
consultant. So I was invited to go and work in Somalia as a
consultant for three year four months and I was assigned to a small
town of Marka which is just south of Mogadishu. And Somalia was very
safe at the time and there wasn't any problems, anything like there is
now and because of the lack of availability of food we were on sea
rations. So we had little Bunsen burner and we opened the cans and
cooked our food. In the town of Marka lived the world's last case of
smallpox and I've forgotten his name but he - we were doing a scab
survey so I needed to interview. The word went out that I needed to
interview anybody that had pox or of course scabs. And he showed up
and introduced himself and I knew who he was and he said, "You know
I've been interviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The
London Times and The Straits Times and newspapers all over the world
by these reporters and they pay me handsomely for the interviews.
What do you have for me?" And I said, "Well I don't work for a fancy
newspaper, I'm not a reporter and all I have is you know a couple of
cans of this sea rations that I have, a couple of aspirin and maybe
some malaria tablets but to tell you the truth that's all I have."
With a little bit of pause he said, "Okay. We'll do it." So I
interviewed him and that was a telling moment. Another instance Dave
- not Dave - Peter Kraskow and I went -- he was working there as well
-- went and lived with the nomads and their camels for about a week.
And we did some blood sticks for antibody levels in neonates and I did
a paper at the University of Michigan on those findings. And it was
really enjoyable. Whenever I go to a country I really like to be with
the people and learn of their customs and certainly their language
which is a beginning to opening doors to their culture. I always try
and learn just a few words of a language and in Somalia there were no
smallpox cases at the time but we almost lost a couple of people. I
remember one time coming back to a base camp that we had with some
officers and things, finding Peter Kraskow on the floor of the
lavatory. He had passed out so I got him back up and we got him
healthy again and that was all right but Steve Fitzgerald who was
working in the north -- I forget the name of the districts, were way,
way in the north there -- almost died of dehydration. He had a bad
case of diarrhea and all that he and his driver could do is pull off
by the side of the road and underneath the tree and he had some re-
hydration salts and some purified water and so the driver nursed Steve
back to health enough so that he could get back to Mogadishu and
continue his work.
Interviewer2: I think we could go on all afternoon with this Howard.
Interviewee: We could
Interviewer2: [Inaudible 40.12] finish off with...
Interviewer: What this means or how it has changed me or...
Interviewer: Exactly, yeah.
Interviewee: Okay.
Interviewer2: I think you have pretty much told us what it's done for
you.
Interviewee: Right. In fact it has changed my life. Just a couple of
sentences. When I had dinner with Ken Bloom and his wife Lois who
also helped with the eradication program in Bangladesh and we ran into
them in Boston many years ago, they had children at the time, my wife
and I didn't. They said, "Well if you had children it's going to
change your life forever," and I didn't quite know what they were
talking about until we had children and it will change your life
forever. And it's how I would attribute my work and experience with
the smallpox eradication program. It has changed my life, changed my
life forever. I wouldn't trade any of it, I wouldn't do any of it - I
would do it all over again about the same way that I had in the past
but it's just a rare opportunity. And when I'm back and I meet with
people and tell them a little bit about that I make an effort to thank
them for their contributions to the programs because they're tax
payers and it's rare that a taxpayer really has any kind of connection
with what's going on overseas and how their tax dollars are being
spent overseas. So I try and make an effort to that to bring them
into the activity of it themselves. I'm grateful for the opportunity.
Interviwer2: That was a great interview. It truly was.
Tim Miner Oral History
Tim Miner interviewed by
Ted Tolavoil
April 2, 2008
Tim Miner was a Peace Corps volunteer assigned to the Smallpox Eradication Program in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and then later Bangladesh. Tim recounts many tales from the field and how this experience has influenced his life.
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