The PAW Always Finds You

In 1979, I was working in Vietnamese refugee camps on small Indonesian islands in the middle of the South China Sea along with another Princetonian, Frank Sharry ’78. We had both been part of the Princeton-in-Asia program in Singapore and had stayed on to work with Vietnamese boat people, screening them for emigration to the U.S.    

Getting to the islands was sometimes a tricky business, involving a mix of helicopters, rescue ships, Vietnamese fishing boats, and small boys paddling coracles. I don’t really remember why in this case I was on a Vietnamese fishing boat — one of those used by the boat people to escape from Vietnam — but we often used them early on to get from one camp to another. The mail had come up from our office in Singapore, and the young man pictured here found my PAW of interest. 

I always use this photo to demonstrate the truth of the belief that the PAW always finds you — and a pleasure it is that it does. I am sure there are Princetonians in the Antarctic also getting their PAW, but this is as far as it went for me. Today, I get my PAW in Serbia, which may be the Southeast Europe equivalent of the middle of the South China Sea, at least in terms of getting mail from the U.S. My latest PAW arrived six weeks after mailing — partly because the U.S. Postal Service first sent it to Senegal instead of Serbia, according to the postmark.