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Programs such as the Peace Corps have long been popular with the ever abundant undecided graduate looking to see the world and do some good.

Such programs promise a chance to help people in the Third World by teaching them things we already know.

But what exactly do a bunch of English majors know about agricultural development in Uganda?

Can a San Diegan with a biology degree relate to a group of preteen Zambians enough to teach HIV/AIDS prevention?

Do you think a theater major could even spell Zimbabwe?

If we’re going to send our wide-eyed grads abroad, we had better teach them something with which we’re familiar.

Which is why I am proposing a new project, based on something many UCLA students actually know about – Blow Jobs Without Borders.

Shortly after arriving in Nairobi last year for a semester of study abroad in Kenya, I found myself perplexed that I didn’t see the same tragic images I’d seen a thousand times before in U.N. pamphlets and Save the Children commercials – you know, the hungry child with a worried face looking on towards his helplessly moribund parents.

Even in rural areas, most people I saw worked, conversed, and otherwise led what seemed to be fairly normal daily lives.

I found out that Kenya was burdened with thousands of college graduates with no jobs. There appeared to be no lack of smart, able and willing Kenyans capable of turning the country around.

Could the nongovernmental organizations have gotten it wrong? After all this time of failed foreign aid and self-serving Western support, has Africa been capable of solving its own problems all along?

Well, it wasn’t more than a few weeks later that my friends starting talking about their sexual adventures and a startling discovery came to light: In Kenya, we observed, most sexual encounters seemed to go directly to intercourse.

One of my friends was surprised that several of the men with whom she hooked up could have cared less about foreplay.

If sex was like baseball, there was no time for first, second or third base – just a whole lot of sliding into home.

It’s important to note that Africans aren’t really familiar with baseball. They know soccer, which is less about bases and more, “Go, go, go, score!” – a terrible analogy for sex, if you ask me.

And suddenly it hit me. Of course we Americans have something to offer Africa – our way of life.

Blow Jobs Without Borders would send in the best, brightest and loosest of college graduates to help teach Africans about the joys of oral sex, hand jobs, frottage, heavy petting and anything else that will help them to enjoy sex like we do, without the high risk for HIV transmission and pregnancy.

Of course, we would also need to teach them how to play baseball as well.

You can’t get HIV from dry humping, mutual masturbation doth not a baby make, and I’d say the greatest casualty of fellatio was a certain blue dress.

Some might feel that sending Americans to Africa to teach about issues such as safe sex or development, as many programs currently do, is inherently condescending.

But I offer this comparison: Would you say the same thing of a rich white student from Beverly Hills teaching safe sex to a class of poor black students in Compton?

Of course not.

We certainly can’t expect students from Compton to teach each other about safe sex, and we can’t expect Africa to teach itself how to live either.

We in the U.S. live longer lives and have more stuff, and are thus far more happy than our African counterparts.The development paradigm has taught us that it is our divine right, our manifest destiny, that we should help Africans by making them as much like us as possible, and that includes helping them to adopt sexual practices closer to ours.

It’s true that foreign aid has funded illegitimate governments and enabled rampant corruption.

But most troubling is how the big aid agencies have created an image that hearkens back to colonization, with young aid-workers driving around prominently in white Land Rovers trying to gain control of things.

Offering Africa our help through programs such as Blow Jobs Without Borders is the perfect way to continue to assert our power over them without the creepy connotation of colonization being so obvious.

Africa doesn’t need more Land Rovers, it needs more Hummers.

But oral sex is just the beginning. As long as we can keep ourselves implanted in the continent through international charities and NGOs, we can ensure that Africans will continue to abandon their “traditional” practices and adopt our way of life, as they have been doing ever since we arrived.

First we came to Africa with Bibles, then we took guns, and today we bring wide-eyed college graduates.

Tomorrow, we come with Lewinsky.

Make head, not war. To get involved with BJWB, e-mail Levine at jlevine@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.