Chris Ward: “I found that the minute I said I was a Peace Corps volunteer, a Peace Corps, the ``s'' was pronounced, although I was…”

“I found that the minute I said I was a Peace Corps volunteer, a Peace Corps, the ``s'' was pronounced, although I was pronouncing the ``s'' before I got in it, the minute I said that though I found that barriers fell, just as the gentleman from Connecticut says. I found that people became more open, more willing to listen. Then as the gentleman from California said, when I began to speak Wolloff, which is the language of the Ollif people, there may be 1.5 million people in Western Africa who speak Wolloff, when I began to speak the language, certainly not with the ability to discuss nuclear physics, but with an ability to go through a number of greetings and to ask after family and friends and, to get to the point, we discussed about the total familiarity of saying ``Summa harit, sa harit,'' ``My house is your house.'' That was the phrase that really tended to bring people together and to bond us, as humans, as people who populate the Earth. I think that there is no better way for America to be represented.…”