Interview Transcript
INTERVIEW
Audio File: Carolyn Olsen Audio File
Transcribed: January 22, 2009
Interviewer: This is an interview with Carolyn Olsen on July 11th two
thousand and eight at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
in Atlanta, Georgia about her role in the smallpox eradication
campaign. The interviewer is Melissa McSwegan. With this interview
we are hoping to capture for future generations the memories of
participants and their families involved in eradicating smallpox.
This is an incredibly important and historic achievement and we want
to hear about your experience. I have some questions to guide you but
please feel free to recount any special stories or anecdotes that you
remember about events or people. The legal agreement you signed says
that you are donating you're donating your oral history to the U.S.
Federal government and it will be in the public domain.
For the record could you please state your full name and that you know
you are being recorded.
Interviewee: My name is Carolyn Hardy Olsen and I know I am being
recorded.
Interviewer: Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, so would you please
briefly describe your childhood and you education and so on and what
led you into work or participating in public health campaigns?
Interviewee: I grew up in Wyoming and after doing all my schooling in
Cheyenne Wyoming I went to the University of Wyoming where I graduated
as civil engineer. And so I was working in Los Angeles when I met
Dennis and shortly after we were married. We went to Africa and we
enjoyed our three years in Liberia then we came back and again I
worked as an engineer. And we were in Springfield Illinois when he
went to (Bagapur) for three months and during that time I was working
for the environmental protection agency and also getting my masters
degree in environmental engineering.
So, when he went to India I said I can't go right now I have to finish
my masters degree. So, he sold the house out from under me and so I
house sat that summer while I finished my degree but he knew I was
coming to India cause I didn't have any place to live. And so I
finished my masters degree and then I arrived in India and he met me
in Delhi and it was pretty bad. And so after two days he put me on a
train and we went off to Lucknow and he said, "I didn't decorate the
apartment because I thought you could do it. And I sat there and all
the wire was on the outside, the refrigerator was in the living room.
It was really basic and I thought, "Oh my goodness." And so he said,
"I've got to work now," and when he came back he said, "I've got to go
the field tomorrow," and he wanted to go so we went off for a ten day
field trip and when you go on a field trip you stay in very
interesting places.
Probably the best items that we took to India were our sleeping bags
cause we were staying - they call them dock bungalows and they were
usually about fifteen cents for a place to stay and breakfast and it
wasn't worth it.
Interviewer: Oh, right.
Interviewee: They were really very basic and if we had water we would -
if we had hot water we were very lucky but usually we had water. Then
when we came back from that first trip Lucknow looked great then about
a couple weeks later I used to have to fly or take the train into
Delhi to get supplies. And like Dennis said it was like going to
Europe. I mean Delhi looked first class after being in the field.
Interviewer: Your perspective changed quite a bit during that time.
Interviewee: Yes.
Interviewer: How did you - you mentioned that you went on a - on field
visits with your husband when he was working with the smallpox
campaign. Did you play any particular role during these trips?
Interviewee: Well, many of the villages were very rural and so I would
usually walk along and because many times by having a woman with him
the women were more comfortable but also I found that it's very
interesting. Sometimes they have [inaudible 04.23] these different
things in the village. I'll tell you one of the most interesting days
though, in India women always have their legs covered and usually
their arms. So I used to wear Levis and a kurta and I had very long
blonde hair at that time and often wore it in a pigtail or pulled
back. And on one occasion we came to this village way out in the
middle of nowhere and I was reading a book that was really interesting
so I said I'm not going into the village, I'll just stay here in the
jeep.
And so all the children come and they looked at me then they all ran
away. And then all the ladies came and they got in a nice little line
and usually people will go 'Namaste' but if you're very important it's
'Namaskar'. And the ladies were all giving me the 'Namaskar' and then
they would chat away in Hindi. Well, the driver was just howling. I
mean he was over by the - just holding his sides. The children had
told the women that Indira Gandhi had come to the village so they were
all telling me - and all the men were in the field because they were
farmers and so probably in some village in India there is the
[inaudible 05.41] of the day Indira Gandhi came to visit.
But in general we would always go to the different health units and
many times the Indian doctor was somebody who was either trained in
Delhi or Bombay, now called Mumbai, and they were so glad to see
somebody who spoke English. I mean they would get out their wedding
pictures. These poor young ladies had arranged marriages and now
they're in a village and they were used to living in a big city and so
often times we had dinner with them. I mean it was a very - they were
very hospitable and we just had a very interesting time in our field
visits. Again we would go to many different health units during a day
tracking down things and making sure their records were right.
The sanitary facilities, again being an environmental engineer were
not always that great and so you always had to watch your intake
during the day. And so everybody wanted to give you tea and I didn't
know at first how to say no and then I found out that, again it was
Rujinder Singh our - Dennis' PMA who told me, "Tell them you're
fasting." So I would say, "Oh thank you but I'm fasting today," and
they would say, "Why?" And I say, "Oh I'm fasting for the health of
my husband and the success of the smallpox program," and they would
think I was just this wonderful person and then two health units
further I would have a cup of tea again. But again you were in an
environment that was very different than what most people especially
during the hot months it was like a hundred and twenty degrees and you
couldn't roll down the windows in the jeep because the wind coming
through.
And one day our driver took a shortcut so we got lost and we ended up
stopping in a village where they went in, took the straw out and got
us a piece of ice out of the ground which we put in a bucket and
bought about twenty four Coca Cola. And we would get towels wet, put
them on our head and it was just a interesting day, I mean very trying
on us.
Interviewer: And did you have the opportunity to apply your engineering
and engineering training while you were living there?
Interviewee: Not really. Again sometime there would be water questions
and - but it really didn't lend itself to get involved. I was able to
do that more when I was in Liberia. I taught sanitation workers how
to do mapping and different things but again we were - actually we
were moving quite a bit when we were in India.
Interviewer: Describe a bit your relationship with the host country
counterparts or the people you were interacting with on a day to day
basis. How did that work?
Interviewee: Being a woman in India is different. Our living
arrangement was quite nice in that we lived upstairs in what they
called (vasadi) of the Dases. And Mrs. Das was actually the president
of the girls school next door, Isabel Thornbird College which is a
prestigious college for Lucknow. And Mr. Das had been the police
chief for the whole state and so we were included in that part. So
there I felt very comfortable being a woman but when we were in the
field it was - or when you were alone you always felt like, especially
young boys between like fifteen and twenty three, they were very
aggressive and so you would always like to make sure that you were -
and as a result the PMA and the driver and everybody were always very
protective of me. And being a professional person I was not used to
having to have to kind of being protected.
And then later on when we moved to Delhi it was a matter of having the
taxi driver watch you while you went into the market. And it wasn't
that you felt security, I mean it was just that they wanted to touch
your hair or something. One time - oh, I had - I was having a strange
pain and my fingers were starting to go numb and so I went to a doctor
in Delhi and they said that I have Hobo's Disease. It was my arm from
riding in the jeep I would have my arm up and it was pinching a nerve.
And he says, "I think we should X-ray you." So I went in and the
doctor came in and he started laughing because the paramedic had put
my hair, my blonde hair so it was like a halo while I was laying
there. But in general you just go with the flow of things. It was
quite interesting.
Interviewer: What were some of the biggest challenges to living in
India?
Interviewee: Food actually was kind of a challenge. We were - when we
were in the field we were usually vegetarians because you didn't know
the last time somebody who may have come through and eaten meat so you
didn't know how old the meat that was in the restaurant. And we ate
at the truck stops along the way and so we would always have to ask
them to put the samosas back in or put new samosas into the hot oil so
everything we ate was hot. The embassy doctor used to just be amazed
because we would not get ill but we didn't eat fresh vegetables unless
we were home and they were peeled even if we went to a very nice hotel
or a nice buffet and we had a lot of soup and a lot of things but also
we had a cook. He had a reputation. He had worked for Dr. Francis
and Dr. McGinnis and everybody knew that Iddu was just a wonderful
cook and so Iddu was an old man, I mean now he is probably forty but
he seemed like an old man to us at that time.
And he became ill and they gave him streptomycin which caused inner
ear damage and so he was having a hard time walking and so then I
would pay for a rickshaw to bring him right up to the door and then I
had him bring his daughter who had had smallpox so it was really quite
appropriate. She was blind in one eye and had pox - to help him so
that he could his work. And one day - she would marketing, he would
do the cooking most of the time. One day I am cooking, he is sitting
there with his feet up, she is outside drinking tea and I'm thinking,
"And I have servants," you know. But during that same period of time
Iddu got more sick and so about every six weeks or so we would have
this regional meeting and all of the epidemiologists would come in and
the international epidemiologists would come for lunch and then the
Indian and the international ones would all come for dinner which
would be about a hundred people.
So, we would have usually about twelve to fifteen for lunch and I had
Sabra who would help but Iddu was gone so it was up to me. So I
thought, "Well what," - so for lunch we had peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches and Kool-Aid for the international group and then for the
other people I did manage to find some things that were almost ready
made, you add two vegetables and you became, you know. And I thought
okay this is adequate. Well, the next month as we're going around to
the different epidemiologists to see how things were going and
everything, all the international ones says, "Boy I hope you have the
same lunch next time we're here. That was the best thing. I go to
bed at night dreaming of that peanut butter and jelly sandwich." And
then the Indian doctors, and Indian doctors actually had a harder time
finding food because their wives had taken care of their food in their
houses and rarely did they eat out. And in India you have to sort
your rice and you know all those different things.
Well, a couple of them asked for my recipe for the different curries I
had made that night and I didn't have the heart to tell them that I
had gone to the store and bought a box of something that I put in it.
So I kept on like don't, [inaudible 15.21] the recipe you know, but I
had an enjoyable time. It was a challenge and you never quite knew
what the day was going to bring.
Interviewer: Were you able at some point to decorate your apartment?
You had mentioned your apartment had all the wires on the outside and
did it eventually become more...
Interviewee: Well, it actually started looking pretty good.
Interviewer: Okay.
Interviewee: I mean, we had fluorescent lights and definitely - but
during - well, electricity was not always available and so sometimes
you would have company or somebody and all of a sudden all the power
would go out. And before the game Trivia Pursuit, we used to play a
game that you would give the person the almanac and the flashlight and
they would ask the other people questions. So that was our
entertainment on that but when we were in the field sometimes if you
didn't have power we would go to the movie because the Hindi movies
are four hours long, they usually have fans or if they are upscale
they have air conditioning and they have their own generators. So we
used to go to a lot of Hindi movies when we were traveling and it was
- like I said the heat was a challenge when you have a hundred and
twenty degrees.
Then the cold was a challenge because you had fifteen foot ceilings
and no heat and so if you invited people over for dinner you would put
the heater under the table and everybody would sit there in their
coats and you would usually have soup or something hot. But other
than that I mean it was probably the most grueling experience I have.
I mean if you look at going to school, going to college, going to
India is just straight up. I mean it's like they say you see the
poorest, you see the richest. You are the hottest, you are the
coldest. Everything is a dichotomy and the people there were just
absolutely very hospitable and very, very nice. They were you know
again I would say kind of shy but some of the doctors that we met
especially the Indian doctors that were in charge of different areas
were very, very nice. And this apartment that we had since they would
come to visit us, they would see what we lived in so then they felt
like they could invite us to their home so whenever we went to Delhi
we would be invited to some of the doctors' houses.
And probably one of the best invitations we ever had was Dr. Hakoli.
While we were there they had the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad which happens
I think every fifteen years and it's on the river banks of the River
Ganges. And on a busy day there's about probably ten to fifteen
million people come and we were invited to come and stay in one of the
tents for a minor bathing day so there was only about five million
people there. And so the Jumna, the Sangam and the Ganges all meet
there and everybody goes to bathe and they have - they pray to the
Sadhus. And the first night we arrived there was this chanting so I
asked Mrs. Hakoli, I said, "Do they pray all night?" cause it sounds
like the Hare Krishna chant. And she said, "Pray?" And I said yes
and she said, "Oh! No they're listing hundreds of women who were lost
today." And it was a tradition that when you went back to your
village you stopped at lost and found to see if anybody from your
village had come and gotten lost to take them back. And you would see
these ladies with their saris tied together and some young son taking
all their aunties to this festival. So it was very, very interesting.
Interviewer: What were some of the biggest differences between India in
Liberia in comparing your two experiences?
Interviewee: Well, I worked in Liberia so I was working as a school
teacher there and teaching math and in India I felt like my role was
more to support my husband and then there were a lot of social
functions like when the international group came again we hosted at
our house. When we lived in Delhi and probably - well the type of
people we met in India were very different even from the international
side cause the Soviet Union was also - had provided quite a few
epidemiologists and doctors for the program. And so we not only had
Russians but we also had people from Chezkslovakia and a lot of
Eastern European countries. And it was an education in social morays
and also in how different countries looked at the Soviet Union and how
when they socialized and when we socialized it was very different.
Cause like if we were to go to a party it was put on by Dr. Codokevich
or something as opposed to when we had a party we would look around
and find out who else had a servant who would be the bartender and
somebody else. So we had all Indian staff working the party.
When we went to a Soviet party it was people from the embassy. I mean
there were all kinds of ladies and other people that were Russian that
were - you weren't uncomfortable but you knew it was very, very
different.
Interviewer: How did your time abroad particularly in India and Liberia
with the smallpox program, how did that affect your career and your
life afterwards?
Interviewee: Well, on a I guess - India is such - I mean it's just
there's so much energy and so much to do and so much to see that I
just suddenly felt like I either had to write a book or do something
and instead I started painting and in about six months I painted sixty
some pictures all Indian. And in India you can do anything so I had a
one woman show and sold my paintings and it was really, it was quite
interesting. And one of the highlights was that Dr. Sensor actually
purchased the first painting I ever painted which was of a train
station and gave it to Dr. Fergie. And so my claim to fame was that
one of my paintings was in the Carter Center for a while but on a
professional side it really brought home the need for clean water.
And my profession as it moved forward I was commissioner of water and
pollution control for the city of Atlanta and I was very involved in a
lot of water and waste water activities.
I also then became the president of a non profit which is called Water
for People and it gives you a real empathy for how important clean
water and drinking water is because when we were in the field in order
to have clean water we used to carry - the old milk buckets there are
kind of made of aluminum and about this tall. And each night we would
fill our jug up with water, put the immersion heater in, boil our
water and put it in a - so we never had cold water but we had clean
water. And with all the disease and the different things you just
realize that water is probably one of the most important parts of our
existence.
Interviewer: Well, do you have any other stories or anecdotes that you
would like to share with us? Any memorable moments from your time
there?
Interviewee: Oh, I must say that one of the - when we moved to Delhi I
didn't get to go in the field anymore so I became a professional
traveler and as a result anybody going anywhere I would go. And I was
able to go up to an area close to the Nepali border which was called
Tiger Haven where they would bring tiger - small tigers back from
London and get them back into the wild. And they would put you up in
a cage and let you watch the animals which was very interesting.
Another time I went with some missionaries and we took a train ride on
a no class train and it was a twenty four hour ride down to New Bombay
and I was with some Swedish people and it was very, very interesting
cause we used to travel by train but we used to travel at least first
class something which wasn't that great. But this was - I think it
cost me ten dollars to take a twenty four hour trip one return. And
on one train we were in a car and the rest was freight and all of a
sudden there was a band and it came through playing and it then got
off the train. We come to find out they were on top and that's where
- also that's where they would make tea and they would lean down over
and sell you tea into the compartment but they riding up on top.
And the last trip that I took that was very interesting was some
people from the embassy were going to go from Delhi to Kabul,
Afghanistan. So we went through Pakistan and through the Khyber Pass
and into Afghanistan. And that was all in the seventies so that was
before the Russians came and I just feel very sad when I see what has
happened to Afghanistan. I don't know if you've read it or not but
Kite Runner when it described at the beginning is the kind of
Afghanistan that I had seen and I also had empathy for Afghanistan
cause when I went to University of Wyoming, University of Afghanistan,
University of Wyoming were sister colleges so I had met Afghans then
also. But other than being a world traveler I think that was pretty
much a very positive experience and again I'm sure it changed my life.
I mean it just gave me a whole different way of looking at the world
and from a South East Asian standpoint but also with all the different
cultures that we met through the program.
Interviewer: Well, thank you for sharing your story.
Interviewee: Okay.
Carolyn Olsen Oral History
July 12, 2008
Carolyn Olsen, wife of Operations Officer Dennis Olsen, discusses life in India and in Liberia, during the Smallpox Eradication Program.
