Ode to a Legendary Peace Corps Volunteer

I no longer remember why I decided to frame this as a eulogy; the volunteer who inspired this character neither died nor was "Teminated" from PC service. But man, did he leave a trail of stories behind. I think he continues to do so, somewhere in the warrens of Charleston . . .

In Memoriam: Skoobs Tirrow, 2003-2005

Skoobs Tirrow was a great volunteer. There's no getting around that. The man himself will forever vacuum controversy in his wake, but his legend will always shine through as a sparkling example of how a human being can jump into the snakepit of life and wring a few minutes of gleeful fun out of a whole lot of pain. We all owe him a great deal.

I met Skoobs three weeks into pre-service training. We were in the same agroforestry group, but somehow in the rush of culture defibrillation we hadn't crossed paths until we were sent to visit two volunteers who lived close to each other. Perched on a ridge of the Cordillera Septentrional one night and taking long pulls from glasses of brugal and fanta, we listened to Skoobs expound his theories on the wealth of nations and how our places in life were dictated by the whims of fate. Then he pointed out that I was urinating on someone's low-slung clothesline. So my first impression of Skoobs was of a quiet brilliance tempered by great powers of observation.

Skoobs was a man of mystery. He seemed to have walked out of a fog-swathed Charleston night and straight into the Peace Corps. There were rumors of his days working as a longshoreman on the Boston waterfront, as a bouncer for a nightclub in Baton Rouge, and even hushed whispers that he had parachuted into Beiruit with the 82nd Airborne. His polymorphous accent would bounce without a hiccup from a Long Island brogue to a Carolina drawl. His tattoos were in three different languages. As we got to know him through training, the pieces of his past became ever more fragmented, yet what he told us himself was never related with anything less than breathtaking honesty.

His service in the Dominican Republic was tumultuous, trackable by the changes in his hair color. Perhaps it could be said that a precedent was set when his CBT doña – exasperated at her charge’s inability to enjoy her yuca/grease soup – attacked him with a frying pan. Indeed, the culmination of Skoobs’ host-family misadventures came a year later when he returned to his site from capital business to find he had been evicted from his shack in the desert. Fortunately, the Jaragua took him in.

Midway through his service, Skoobs authored a controversial article that appeared in this publication under the title “The Chameleon.” While it inspired more late-night, brugal-fueled discussions than can be here related, the essay’s premise – that cultural adaptation can go too far – quickly became secondary to the truth hidden between the lines: that Skoobs himself was capable of adapting to any environment, society or point of view. The district of Polo is in Skoobs’ debt for his work with coffee cooperatives, Monteada Nueva thanks him for the wildflowers he scattered across hill and dale, and Leonel Fernandez owes him one for that thing in the place with the guy that time, but Skoobs’ gift to Volunteers was his Chameleon Ethic.

At the heart of the matter, it could be said that Skoobs Tirrow was more than simply a man. He was an era. For years to come, the PCDR community will be recalling events of unabashed insanity utilizing him as a reference point. We are already hearing it: "Jeez, what would Skoobs do in this situation?" "Man, do you remember that time in Azua when Skoobs got us free drinks and lapdances . . . um . . . I mean pretzels?" His influence around this little island will not expire anytime soon (Avenida Tirrow in Barahona, for example), but those of us fortunate enough to know and love him find comfort in knowing that he is now in a better place.

-Bill Boykin-Morris

Agroforestry

Vuelta Larga, Nagua