Harvard's 'Experimenters' Taken into Foreign Homes

The U.S. Department of State each year tortures its brains and budget in dubious attempts to improve our relations with foreign countries. For the past 26 years The Experiment in International Living has annually demonstrated the theory that the best way to understand foreign peoples is to go and live with them.

This past summer, 800 young Americans traveled with Experimental groups to live in homes in 18 different countries in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Some of these Americans lived on farms in northern Denmark; others stayed in mountain villages in Austria. But there were some common features. Each Experimenter spent a month's "homestay" living as a member of a foreign family, and a second month of group travel in his Experiment country.

The Harvard Experimenters Club, a group of active alumni of the organization estimates that there are about 80 Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates who have gone on the Experiment. The club holds weekly dinner meetings to compare experiences and discuss various phases of the Experiment's operation.

Next summer for the first time, the Experiment will penetrate the Iron Curtain and send a group to Poland, it was announced recently. It has been rumored that there are plans for an Experiment to Russia the following year.

Although the State Department was recently having trouble in its relations with Yugoslavia, the Experimenters who went there this summer had no difficulties developing friendships with the Yugoslavs, reports James D. Lorenz '60, one of the group members.

Lorenz and eight other Americans who Experimented in Sarajevo were the fifth group to visit the Communist country. The first Experimenters to Yugoslavia, in 1851, spent the summer working on a volunteer labor project.

Of the five girls, one was Joan Bart, a Radcliffe graduate student in Harvard's Russian Studies Program. A 19-year-old girl from the University of Michigan, an 18-year-old student from Scripps College, Calif., who had lived all her life on a cattle ranch, and two working girls who had attended Smith and Mount Holyoke completed the group.

Lorenz and the others arrived in Rotterdam by student ship on July 12, and traveled by train to Yugoslavia. For the next three and a half weeks, the Harvard student became a member of the Kamakovsky family in an apartment-housing project in Sarajevo. The five-year-old housing development, built by the government for factory workers, contained some 1800 apartments, an elementary school, and a shopping center.

Mr. Kamakovsky is an engineer in the local Famus motor factory. (The name "Famus" was coined from the English word "famous," Lorenz learned.) The engineer's position is one of the top five in the strategic industry. His full title is Ing. Kamakovsky Evon--the Ing for engineer, and Evon, his given name, is written last.

Lorenz' Yougoslav "Mother," Mima, spoke no English. "She understood a little of my terrible French," Lorenz said. "Enough to feed me every day."

There was only one child in the Kamakovsky family, a little boy of eight, named Dusko. Unlike most Experimenters, therefore, Lorenz did not have a foreign "brother" or "sister" close to his own age.

"Mr. Kamakovsky served as my host," Lorenz said. He described the Yugoslav as " a very powerful man," about 45 years old, who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day.

Mr. Kamakovsky spoke eight month's worth of English which he learned last winter by going to the city after an eight and a half hour workday to take a four and a half hour language class. Arriving home between 8 and 9 in the evening, he would begin his "homework" for the factory.

Yugoslav Laziness

"He told me that 'there is nothing else to do here but work,'" Lorenz said. The Experimenter concluded, however, that this unusual propensity for work is not a common characteristic of the Yugoslavs, but a trait peculiar to his host.

During his stay there, Lorenz was given a room to himself in the five-room apartment. Usally that room served as living-dining room for the family. The American often left his door open to encourage the rest of the family to share the room with him. But his over-gracious hosts simply shut the door again.

Lorenz described the apartment as relatively well-off and modern. There was a toilet and running water, although no hot water. During the winter, a log heater warms the apartment.

Several of the Yugoslavs who played host to Experimenters were engineers. They had taken in an American primarily to improve their English, and had little concept of the aims of the Experiment, Lorenz said. It is often the case that American Experimenters are faced with the problem of explaining the Experiment itself as well as explaining America to their foreign hosts.

The Kamakovskys and one other host family were neither Communist nor anti-Communist, but right in the middle. Like many Yugoslavs, Lorenz said, they are "able to sway with the wind."

In general, Lorenz said, the Yugoslavs are used to keeping their political views personal. Mr. Kamakovsky carried this to the extent of seeming to have few political views at all. He would tell Lorenz, "Two jobs are too much for a person. I cannot be an engineer and a politician at the same time."

While the Yugoslavs seemed reluctant to discuss politics with their fellow countrymen, Lorenz found that many of them were anxious to talk politics with Americans as a vent for pent-up feelings.

The Silent World

Here, however, he noted a difference in attitude between adults and youths. The young people would talk anywhere. But their elders were more cautious about secrecy. Lorenz said, "Mrs. K. always put her fingers to her lips as if to say, 'Don't repeat a word of this.'"

Experimenting in a communist country offered particular opportunities for interviews with government and religious personnel. Meetings were arranged for the Experimenters with the head of the Communist Party in the province of Bosnia-Hercegovina, with labor and union leaders, with the head of public information and education, with the adviser to the agricultural cooperatives, and with religious officials.

The interviews with these dignitaries varied, Lorenz said, but "on the whole they were talking right to us." During the 25-day homestay, the group also toured many factories and attended social functions given in their honour by mayors and other government officers.

An 18-day group troup took the Experimenters and some of their Yugoslav hosts through Macedonia to Lake Chrid, a resort area on the Albanian border; then along the Dalmatian coast on the Adriatic to Dubrounik.

When most Experiment groups travel one young person from each host family accompanies the Americans. But since only five young Yugoslavs could make the trip, four of the older members of the families went along with the group.

The Experimenters traveled by public transportation, which Lorenz described as "amazing" in its inadequacy. The trains are practically freight cars with coal smoke blowing in open windows, only wooden benches to sit on, and peasants standing in the aisles. The rail-roads sell about three times as many tickets as seats.

Lorenz remembers standing for six hours on a packed express train that runs between Belgrade and Athens. "We played gin rummy," he said. "One guy was the table--his right hand for the discard pile and his left for drawing."

Ride It Like You Find It

The public busses, he said, are as crowded as the trains. The busses leave between 3 and 4 a.m. because they must travel in daylight through the mountain roads. For three days in a row the Experimenters began the day's travel at 2:30 a.m. and turned in at 8:30 or 9 p.m.. "It was one of the best experiences I had--though not the happiest," Lorenz said. "We were thrown in conditions just as the Yugoslavs live."

Only at one point in the summer did Lorenz feel that the Experiment ideal was fully realized, and that was when their 42 Yugoslav friends bid the Americans goodbye at the Sarajevo station. After the usual exchange of addresses and emotional leave-taking, the train pulled out at 10:30 p.m. One fat Yugoslav mother ran the whole length of the station, yelling in the only English words she knew, "Come back, come back and see us someday."

Belgrade Holiday

The Americans spent four days in Belgrade having interviews with government officials before catching a boat home again from Rotterdam.

Although each Experiment is indeed a unique "experiment," and especially one in a Communist country, Lorenz' experiences would sound familiar to any Experimenter.

There is the initial meeting with the group of Americans, usually college students and young working people between the ages of 19 and 30. Some Experiment groups, however, are made up of high school students.

There is the inevitable adjustment to unaccustomed living conditions, usually below the standards Americans enjoy, to new foods, to new ways of thinking. There is always some problem with the language--even in the British Isles.

There is the effort to become accepted as a real member of the family--and a great feeling of satisfaction for the Experimenter if he achieves this closeness with his foreign family. There are bound to be young peoples parties for the visit- ing Americans, and there is a group trip by train, bus, boat or bicycle depending on the terrain of the country.

These are the general outlines, but the formula varies from country to country. Each prospective Experimenter requests the country he would like to visit. In each he can expect something slightly different.

Warm Milk in Suburbia

In Holland, for example, an Experimenter may well find himself in a brick home very similar to a middle-class residential dwelling in the United States. But he will learn that doors to rooms are usually kept shut, as few homes have central heating. He will learn that refrigeration is not a necessity of life, and that warm milk, while he might not like it, will not poison him.

He will discover that bread is the staff of life, and that the Dutch spread everything from chocolate candies to fresh stawberries on their bread. He will learn to put mustard or mayonnaise, and not catsup, on the French fries he buys from sidewalk stands.

The Experimenter in Holland will learn to ride a bicycle, if he doesn't know how, and will come to consider a 10-mile bike ride a short sprint. He will discover that the raincoat, and not wooden shoes, is the most essential article in the Dutch national costume.

When he goes abroad, he may come home calling a bicycle a 'fiets" and windmills "windmolen."

Dutch-German Relations

Because Holland is such a small country, he may find his group trip takes him to the surrounding countries of Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany as well as various parts of the Netherlands. If so, he will have an opportunity to sense the hostility which many of his Dutch friends still feel for the Germans, despite the formal cordial relations between the two countries.

It is this type of understanding of a country's customs and people, rather than a superficial tourist's view, that Donald B. Watt had in mind 26 years ago when he made plans for the first Experiment group to go to Switzerland. That first Experiment, in 1932, took a group of American boys to a camp with German and Belgian youths.

The following year, a group of boys and girls lived in homes in Germany for the summer. Since then, the Experiment has broadened its scope to include countries in four continents, plus a program which brings European and Asian Experimenters to the United States.

The Experiment has adopted the slogan "Expect the Unexpected" and some groups have lived up to it more than others. A new book about the Experiment, Passport to Friendship by William Peters, tells the stories of the group that was caught in Spain when civil war broke out there, and the groups in Europe when the Second World War began.

The Insider

But most Experimenters agree that anyone who chooses this unique way of visiting a foreign country can expect a few certainties--an insider's view of their Experiment country, many lasting friendships, and an unforgettable summer