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This book is the
autobiography of the life and times of Eric Krystall, a social anthropologist
and development expert noted especially for family planning and anti-AIDS
efforts in Kenya.
Krystall led an
interesting life. Born a Jew in South Africa in 1928, he became an anti-apartheid
activist when in college in the late forties. Self-exiled to the United Kingdom
for more studies at the London School of Economics, he remained engaged in such
efforts as well as burgeoning African independence movements. He married an
American and re-located to the U.S. for graduate studies at the University of
Michigan.
For a research project,
he moved into a Detroit ghetto and interviewed black women about their family
expectations. This led to involvement in civil rights campaigns, which
intensified with subsequent academic assignments at traditionally black
colleges: Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and Shaw in Raleigh, North Carolina. In
this phase of life (the late sixties), Krystall provided cross-cultural training
for several groups of Kenya-bound PCVs (including mine).
In the early 70s, anxious
to get back to Africa, Krystall took an assignment with FAO to develop
family-planning projects in Kenya. Except for a brief sojourn at FAO
headquarters in Rome, he has been in Kenya ever since responsible for a series
of family-oriented projects: family planning, rural communications,
anti-corruption, and AIDS education. Throughout, he proved himself—certainly by
his own admission, after all this is an autobiography—to be capable, effective,
innovative, and sensitive to Kenyan bureaucratic culture. No doubt he was.
Krystall is an unabashed
name-dropper and he drops hundreds in this book. It is astonishing that he
remembered so many folks, but each anecdote is complete with the names of
people involved. Some Krystall remembered fondly, others he skewered
unmercifully. He kept his knife sharpened especially for fuzzy-headed
government or UN bureaucrats who did not understand or appreciate how the development
process functioned.
In that regard he was
ever faithful to the ideas of local input and sustainability. He lamented the
predilections of donors, especially the UN family and USAID, to fund and
support the development flavor of the year, then to drop it abruptly and move
on to something new.
Similarly, he documented
the self-interest and corruption that plagued the Kenyan side. Indeed,
Krystall’s insights and critiques of the development process and his successes
and failures (of which he admits a few) should be mandatory reading for
development personnel—both international and Kenyan.
There are some
interesting Peace Corps comments. First, Krystall claimed to have been among
the students on the steps of the University of Michigan administration building
when Senator Kennedy revealed his plan for international service. Later Krystall
was drafted by several RPCVs from Tanzania who put together an organization to provide
PC training in the mid-sixties. Among the groups trained was mine for Kenya in
the summer of 1968.
Krystall was responsible
for cross-cultural training. I remember the language and technical training
much more vividly than anything cross-cultural. Although he got the North
Dakota location correct, he mistakenly reported we were on an Indian
reservation. Although we did a “live-in” on Standing Rock reservation, our
training site was at a defunct job corps facility just outside Bismarck.
Krystall later told of
trying to get more black Americans into the Peace Corps—project that had
limited success, in part because Kyrstall alleged—in a bit of hyperbole—that
potential volunteers required twelve references and no police record. He stated,
“few blacks, especially black men, grew up in the south without one.”
Krystall also asserted
that the “Peace Corps administration… was located in the State Department.”
That statement is just wrong. These errors and exaggerations about issues I
knew something about compel questions about what else in this book is similarly
affected.
My nit-picks aside, Krystall’s
narrative of his life reads well. The recounting of his youth and coming of age
as a Jew in apartheid era South Africa shows how he came to be liberal,
progressive, and an activist for change. He reveled in playing a similar role
in the American civil rights movement, but truly found his calling as a
development expert in Kenya.
In addition to broader
topics, Krystall keeps the reader informed of his family, friends, loves,
religious and political views and activities. In sum, it is a revealing
portrait of a man who has long come to terms with himself and his life.
