shoved their posters into the team vehicles on their way to the District Officer’s bungalow. It almost became a brawl, but the military swept through the town from their nearby camp and soon restored order. 41 By 1966, although Bau still had some military posturing by Commonwealth forces, the two Peace Corps teachers there thought the military presence was “more theater than reality.” 42 Yet at the same time, another volunteer building roads and bridges in the area found that the local Bidayuh residents protected him from any trouble with guerillas by warning him when they were rumored to be close by. 43 At that time Bau had curfews and also four forward gun positions that boomed all night long. The local Bidayuh, when told that they should inform authorities about “communists,” were confused. They had to ask a local Peace Corps woman what the word meant. 44 The situation was more complex elsewhere. Some volunteers found themselves in the midst of turmoil. An unexpected side effect of these events for one busy volunteer was that his mother did not hear from him for a while and complained to Sargent Shriver, the head of Peace Corps in Washington. He wrote the Peace Corps representative in Kuching, who in turn sent a telegram to the volunteer, “Write Mommy.” By 1967 anti-Malaysia rebels had lost their safe havens in Kalimantan, due to the end of Confrontation. They returned to Sarawak to continue their struggle. As a result, Sarawak then and later had “black” areas versus white ones, the latter being free of rebels. Black areas had curfews and were subject to unannounced house searches. NonDayaks in such areas had to hand over their firearms. Food and other supplies were rationed to deny them reaching the rebels. Many of these black areas had Peace Corps volunteers working in them because by the mid-1960s well over a hundred volunteers had been placed throughout Sarawak. 45 At the Dragon School near Kuching, where Peace Corps people taught, a 7 PM to 6 AM curfew was imposed after a rebel raid in the area. To ease the tension in this situation, free public films were shown at the school on Sunday evenings. Kanowit also became a black area as the 1970s drew near, with rebel camps in the forest. Peace Corps volunteers teaching at the secondary school at Kanowit experienced night curfews and antiAmerican sentiments. In 1963, following the Brunei uprising, school buildings were damaged by gunfire at the Chinese school in Bekenu during a rebel assault on the stockade (kubu) there. 46 When Indonesia publically declared its anti-Malaysia stance, the rebels became more active in opposing the Sarawak government militarily. They also opposed the nonChinese schools. 47 Wherever rebels attacked built-up areas, schools had to close or more to safer quarters; this was the case in Tebedu, Gumbang, and Lubok Antu. These developments affected Peace Corps teachers and others in a number of schools. In one case, Ed Putka, on his first day of teaching at a Sibu school, found red-paint slogans on the walls and the basketball court: “Join the revolution,” and “Don’t go to school where 41
L. De Danaan, personal communication, 16 October, 2011. J. McClay, personal communication, 7 February, 2011. 43 J. Mohrlang, personal communication, 25 February, 2010. 44 L. Steedman, personal communication, 11 December, 2011. 45 In 1967 Malaysia as a whole had more Peace Corps volunteers than any other country (Quaid, 1983). 46 Anonymous, 1963. 47 One such case was St. Elizabeth School in Sibu, a girls’ school ( Munan-Oettli, 1987). 42