Buddy Scarborough

Running Towards Adventure:

Buddy Scarborough’s Time in Clau-Clau, South Africa (2010-2012)

 

While exploring the rich culture of Soweto, Buddy Scarborough and his wife stumbled onto a Sangoma Ceremony. The Sangoma is spiritual leader that acts as a traditional healer who might be able to conjure sprints through song, dance and drink. The couple were invited to participate and watched with intrigue.

The crowd passed around a gourd, taking sips as it traded hands. When it reached them, they smelled the familiarly strong sorghum beer and took a risky swallow to live for the spirit of adventure.

The next day they ran the Soweto Marathon together and passed through the same streets they had ventured the night before. While their stomachs didn’t thank them, they knew that none of this would have happened if they never went to South Africa.

Scarborough had a desire to serve in the Peace Corps since the first time he heard about it. Shortly after the 9/11 tragedy, Scarborough’s grandfather, a marine veteran, encouraged him to pursue peace rather than military service.

About nine years later, Scarborough graduated from Alma College in Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in Sociology, married his girlfriend, worked for a year then applied to to serve alongside his wife.

“I wanted something different,” Scarborough said.

Scarborough and his wife were sent to Clau-Clau, South Africa, a town in the Eastern province of Mpumalanga.

Despite Scarborough’s expectation of a more developed infrastructure, he found challenges in South Africa that he didn’t expect.

“Part of the mission of peace is learning a lot about a place and challenging your own assumptions,” Scarborough said.

Although the town had electricity, water came from a community tap. More pressingly, Scarborough saw a disparity of wealth and resources between that white and black community members reflecting the legacy of apartheid.

“This was a country that had undergone so much trauma, and I would get people that thought I was Afrikaans before they thought I was American,” Scarborough said, referencing the term for a white ethnic group that reside in South Africa.

“For the most part, almost universally, people were excited to see me there,” Scarborough said.

Scarborough worked as a teaching assistant. He supported teachers, aided in enrichment activities for the students and organized events. For example, Scarborough supported one program that helped teenagers secure internships with businesses from a nearby city.

Scarborough is most fond of his memories as a scout leader. With the help of another teacher and friend, Scarborough started a scout club that met weekly. They taught kids how to tie knots, took them on camping trips and organized community service activities.

“Honestly it was a lot of music and dancing,” Scarborough said.

The program allowed him to connect with the community and form deeper connections.

“I didn’t feel like I was part of Peace Corps as much there as it was the community and the people that I saw everyday,” Scarborough said.

Another way Scarborough solidified his outreach was through practicing his SiSwati.

“The biggest impact was probably just speaking the language,” Scarborough said. “This is a language that only people in this small corner of the world speak, and I became fluent in it.”

To this day, Scarborough can still speak SiSwati, in part due to his ongoing use of the language when talking to his dog. Busika (winter, in SiSwati), now resides in Texas but became Scarborough’s pet when he was residing in South Africa. He and his wife taught the dog commands and tricks using SiSwati, much to the neighborhood children’s delight. Even now, Busika continues to respond to “hlala pansi” (sit) and “buya la” (come here), even while living thousands of miles from their original home.

Scarborough also brought back the lessons that he learned during his service.

“You’re not going to understand why things are the way they are, why someone’s doing something,” Scarborough said. “That loss of control and knowing how to navigate situations where you have very little control over the context and over others has been really useful to me.”

Scarborough found that his experience in the Peace Corps was invaluable to his later life pursuits through both acquired skills and networking.

“The Peace Corps is a very unique and highly regarded way to set yourself apart from other college graduates on the labor market,” Scarborough advises. “It shows that you possess this intangible skill to navigate complex situations to be in different environment and to thrive in them to learn and adjust.”

In the three months after Scarborough and his wife finished their service, they took their readjustment allowance and sprit of adventure to India. When they returned to the states, Scarborough completed his doctorate and now works at UNT as an associate professor of sociology and director of graduate studies in the Department of Sociology.

More than anything, Scarborough believes that his time in service helped him develop a sense of innovation and creativity.

“It’s not easy, but nothing in life worth doing is easy,” Scarborough said. “I think it’s definitely one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

 

If you would like to learn more about Buddy's time in Peace Corps, you can reach out to him here.

^{Written and Edited by Eliana Fulton, B.A. Journalism Student at UNT
Interviewed by Zach Yeager, Peace Corps Prep Coordinator}